Factors Contributing to Halal Food Fraud in Selangor

This paper attempted to explore the factors that contribute to halal food fraud and possible methods to address this problem. This paper uses a qualitative research approach as well as in-depth interviews with the two enforcement officials from JAIS and KPDNHEP. Based on the interviews, the researcher found that two key factors contributing to halal food fraud are lack of knowledge and halal as a marketing tool. After observing the factors, the researchers hypothesize solutions to the halal fraud epidemic. The study will help to improve the halal industry by solving all halal problems. Keywords: Halal Industry, Food, Fraud, Selangor eISSN: 2398-4287© 2021. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v6iSI6.3118

Food fraud: A menace to public health

Food is a basic requirement of people that helps in providing proper nutrition and energy for growth and repair of tissues. However, food which provides numerous health benefits now comes in adulterated form. Some of the most frequent products to be fraudulent are common to many households – olive oil, cheese, honey, herbs and spices etc. The greed of industries to gain higher profits within short period of time makes them to indulge in malpractices such as food fraud and involves such techniques for food fraud which go undetected even after using laboratory techniques. There are manifold analytical techniques to detect food fraud in laboratory but consumers are not able to detect it at home scale. Moreover, no one bothers to do that after buying it. Consuming a fraudulated food product can prove harmful for human body as it may have short term or long-term effects. It is only consumer awareness that can protect them from food fraud. The purpose of this review is to study the food fraud that is deliberately affecting the health of consumers.

Handheld Spectral Sensing Devices Should Not Mislead Consumers as Far as Non-Authentic Food Is Concerned: A Case Study with Adulteration of Milk Powder

With the rising trend of consumers being offered by start-up companies portable devices and applications for checking quality of purchased products, it appears of paramount importance to assess the reliability of miniaturized sensors embedded in such devices. Here, eight sensors were assessed for food fraud applications in skimmed milk powder. The performance was evaluated with dry- and wet-blended powders mimicking adulterated materials by addition of either ammonium sulfate, semicarbazide, or cornstarch in the range 0.5–10% of profit. The quality of the spectra was assessed for an adequate identification of the outliers prior to a deep assessment of performance for both non-targeted (soft independent modelling of class analogy, SIMCA) and targeted analyses (partial least square regression with orthogonal signal correction, OPLS). Here, we show that the sensors have generally difficulties in detecting adulterants at ca. 5% supplementation, and often fail in achieving adequate specificity and detection capability. This is a concern as they may mislead future users, particularly consumers, if they are intended to be developed for handheld devices available publicly in smartphone-based applications.

Identifying food fraud vulnerability factors in food fraud incidents – a review of global incidents 2000–2018

PurposeGlobal food fraud incidents are regularly reported and are on the rise due to the ineffectiveness of traditional food safety intervention strategies. The increase in food fraud opportunity is prevalent in the state of the COVID-19 pandemic as well. Food fraud vulnerability assessment (FFVA) is acknowledged as a critical requirement by the Global Food Safety Initiatives (GFSIs) and the World Health Organisation for an effective food fraud mitigation plan. However, there is no clear direction or ways to identify and analyse food fraud vulnerability factors based on real-data.Design/methodology/approachCombining the barrier analysis technique and the routine activity theory to review the 580 cases of food fraud recorded in the Decernis database, this paper identified new food fraud vulnerability dimensions and insights pinpointed to three categories of opportunity, motivation and countermeasures.FindingsNew dimensions of food fraud vulnerability factors are identified in this paper over the period 2000–2018. Where possible, new insights related to each food fraud vulnerability factor and dimension were identified, and literature evidence was used to confirm their contribution.Originality/valueThere is a gap observed in the first step of FFVA in the literature. This paper is the first study to undertake a FFVA based on evidence recorded in a global food fraud database. This paper offers critical insights into global food fraud regulations by exploring the new emerging root causes of food fraud and analysing them, supporting developing effective food fraud prevention plans (FFPPs).

Food Defense – do conceito às atuais exigências do mercado internacional

O conceito food defense emergiu nos EUA como resposta aos atentados terroristas do 11 de Setembro, em 2001. A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) e outras agências desenvolveram medidas para proteger a cadeia alimentar do país aos ataques maliciosos. O objetivo consistia em adotar medidas preventivas da contaminação intencional da água e alimentos, onde indivíduos recorrem a agentes (biológicos, químicos ou físicos) com o intuito de causar prejuízos às organizações, governos ou à população. A vulnerabilidade da cadeia alimentar propiciou a difusão deste conceito através de normas certificáveis como: International Featured Standards (IFS), British Retail Consortium (BRC) e Food Safety Systems Certification (FSSC 22000). Este estudo tem como objetivo a emergência do conceito food defense (defesa alimentar), junto aos termos já conhecidos: food quality (qualidade alimentar), food safety (segurança alimentar), food security (acessibilidade alimentar) e food fraud (fraude alimentar), através das regulamentações, leis, metodologias e ferramentas para implementação de food defense nas cadeias de produção e distribuição de alimentos de empresas exportadoras até empresas familiares. Metodologia: análise qualitativa através de pesquisa bibliográfica nas bases Scopus, Web of Science e SciELO. Espera-se que os resultados deste estudo despertem a necessidade de formar profissionais da área de alimentos conhecedores do conceito food defense, e que orientem a adoção de medidas conceituais e práticas que previnam e controlem a contaminação intencional de alimentos, de forma a atender às exigências dos mercados consumidores e às normas e legislações vigentes pertinentes à qualidade e segurança dos alimentos.

Improvement of state control of food safety taking into account the requirements of the legislation of the European Union

The article is devoted to the issues of improving the legal basis of state control of food safety in the context of harmonisation of national legislation of Ukraine with the relevant legislation of the European Union. The relevance of the study is due to the need to improve the effectiveness of state control of food safety to guarantee European standards for the protection of human health. The purpose of the study is to clarify the structural features of legislation related to state control of food safety, identify practical issues of legal regulation of state control of food safety and develop ways to solve them. The methodological basis of the research consists of the comparative legal method, historical-legal and dialectical methods, methods of analysis and synthesis, system-structural and formal-legal methods. It was found that food legislation and feed legislation have a common goal of legal regulation – the protection of human health, although from a formal point of view they are different areas of law. Insufficient legal certainty of such grounds for unscheduled inspections as reasonable suspicion of non-compliance with legal requirements is due to different approaches to the formulation of powers of regulatory authorities in Ukraine and the European Union. In order to avoid corruption factors during state control of food safety, it is better to introduce information and communication technologies, and not resort to incomplete harmonisation of the legislation of Ukraine with the legislation of the European Union. The introduction of the European concept of food fraud in Ukraine requires its coordination with criminal and administrative legislation, as well as the creation of the necessary organisational and legal conditions for identifying relevant offenses during state control of food safety

Detection of Species Substitution in the Meat Value Chain by High-Resolution Melting Analysis of Mitochondrial PCR Products

Substituting high commercial-value meats with similar cheaper or undesirable species is a common form of food fraud that raises ethical, religious, and dietary concerns. Measures to monitor meat substitution are being put in place in many developed countries. However, information about similar efforts in sub-Saharan Africa is sparse. We used PCR coupled with high-resolution melting (PCR-HRM) analysis targeting three mitochondrial genes—cytochrome oxidase 1 (CO1), cytochrome b (cyt b), and 16S rRNA—to detect species substitution in meat sold to consumers in Nairobi, Kenya. Out of 107 meat samples representing seven livestock animals, 11 (10.3%) had been substituted, with the highest rate being observed in samples sold as goat. Our results indicate that PCR-HRM analysis is a cost- and time-effective technique that can be employed to detect species substitution. The combined use of the three mitochondrial markers produced PCR-HRM profiles that successfully allowed for the consistent distinction of species in the analysis of raw, cooked, dried, and rotten meat samples, as well as of meat admixtures. We propose that this approach has broad applications in the protection of consumers against food fraud in the meat industry in low- and middle-income countries such as Kenya, as well as in developed countries.

Key challenges and developments in non-targeted methods or systems to identify food adulteration

Food fraud is an ongoing global challenge that is amplified by the complexity of supply chain networks and fraudsters becoming more innovative in the way they commit fraud. There is a great need for rapid analytical tools that offer broad product screening. Non-targeted methods provide an approach by which a food matrix can be analysed and screened for adulterations. While various developments exist for rapid non-targeted approaches, there are still multiple challenges to overcome. More work is required to validate, harmonise and standardise non-targeted methods and the associated data interpretations. Promising advances include novel technological developments with devices becoming smaller and portable with increased sensitivity. It is undoubtedly that fingerprinting approaches generate huge datasets that need to be stored and utilised as effectively as possible; creating new opportunities for Big data analysis and the Internet of Things – both addressing the need to convert data into insights to act upon.