How to minimize the risk of food fraud due to coronavirus

The food supply chain can be daunting due to its extraordinary complexity. With this complexity comes the opportunity of food fraud. The coronavirus crises amplify the opportunities for fraudsters dramatically as in-person audits are no longer possible to uncover hidden rooms and storage areas or forbidden materials. This places a significant burden on food analysts to find food fraud through laboratory testing.

In this on-demand webinar, Dr. Bert Popping, Managing Director at FOCOS, explores the recent developments in the molecular methods field and puts them in the context of standardization and existing public and private law. Dr. Popping highlights the activities of government bodies, not-for-profit organizations like AOAC, ILSI and USP, and private law schemes like BRC, IFS, and SQF, and emphasizes how the development of methods for species determination can help to detect adulteration.

Read on for highlights from the live Q&A session or register to watch the webinar at a time that suits you.

Q: Governments are active on food fraud, but it seems that some countries are more active than others. Is that impression correct?

BP: I'm not entirely sure if that impression is correct, but what is certainly fair to say is that some countries' governments invest more resources into tackling food fraud than others. We see that across different European countries.

We have countries that have established their own institutes with a lot of equipment and staff resources, meaning they would be able to move faster on developing or implementing methods for food fraud detection. Whereas other countries have seen less of a drive towards developing or implementing these technologies.

Q: What is happening in the food chemistry area, and what are the recently developed non-targeted methods?

BP: We've seen several methods, both the molecular biology method with NGS and the food chemistry method, especially with the LC-MS/MS method, but also NIR and STR methods have seen quite a boost.

It's not only the method, it's also the equipment that you see. We’re moving towards portable equipment, where you don't need a sample you send to a laboratory, but you can actually do it on-site. If you get a result that doesn't correspond to the profile, then you would want to take a sample.

It appears that the technology developers and the companies are also shifting the first line of defense from just exclusive testing in the food laboratory towards the food production site, or even sometimes the purchasing site from where you buy the raw materials. There’s been quite some development, it’s a dynamic area right now.

Q: How will non-targeted methods be validated if you don't know what they target?

BP: That is quite a challenge because you’re right in saying, "If you don't know what you're looking for, how can you validate it?"

At AOAC, we have taken an approach where we are basing it on a number of adulterants that we do know, and the non-targeted method has to recognize the majority, or ideally, all of them. When you do the validation of the method, the laboratory that developed the method or the equipment manufacturer that developed the method will be sent samples with a range of adulterants that are known to the person that's sending out the samples. That’s one way of validating methods. I'm sure that, in the process of deploying these non-targeted methods, we'll discover quite a number of so-far-undetected new adulterants.

Q: When it comes to validating untargeted approaches, how can this process be standardized?

BP: At AOAC, we are already developing a protocol, and some other protocols already exist, for non-targeted methods. We have standard method performance requirements (SMPR) for milk, extra virgin olive oil, and honey. And right now, the team is working on spices and botanicals, and not only on the chemistry side but also on the molecular biology side.

Also, at the European level, you find that the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) has established a new technical committee, it's TC460, on food fraud. I believe it's subgroup five that is working on how to standardize and validate non-targeted methods.

Q: What is the possibility of adding new species into the NGS database?

BP: That’s a piece of cake, as soon as you have the sequence. You don't necessarily need the entire sequence of a species either. Most of the NGS methods are based on either cytochrome b, cytochrome oxidase, and for plants, it's matKO. Therefore, any new species that comes out can be easily added once you have that stretch of sequence.

Q: In the case of processed meat, which method is more appropriate to detect adulterations, a DNA-based method or a protein-based or proteomics approach?

BP: That depends on what the matrix is. If you have pure meat, I would say that the PCR method is the better choice because you can easily take any species that you have a reference for in the database.

However, if you don't have the meat but have a processed product like protein from soy or from another plant, and you want to know what else is in there, you may not have enough DNA, so the protein method is probably the better one. It really depends on the type of matrix that you have in front of you. If it's straightforward meat, DNA is probably the method of choice.

Q: What is the percentage error caused by techniques like NGS?

BP: Somebody once presented a very nice image, based on the raw data, you either have the Mona Lisa or Frankenstein monster with NGS analysis. Depending on the bioinformatics pipeline and technology you're using, you may get different results. There are standard station approaches for NGS that are on the way, that will minimize those errors, and they will specify what a maximum permitted error would be.

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