Dive Summary:
- U.S. Pharmacopeia has assembled a food fraud database, which collects details on adulterants and detection methods involved in reported incidents, and Markus Lipps, the nonprofit organization's senior director of food standards, tells Food Navigator that olive oil, ground spices, and fruit juices are among the most common targets for fraud.
- Lipps also explains that dairy products are vulnerable targets, though more so in India than in the U.S. and Europe.
- Ultimately, Lipps says that the more money that can be made producing a food ingredient more cheaply, the more vulnerable it will be to fraud.
From the article:
You can't paint a horse like a cow and expect people not to notice - but grind their meat into patties and it may be a different story. So what makes an ingredient vulnerable to food fraud?
Economically motivated adulteration - or food fraud - may or may not be inspired by mal intent, but the threat to human health is the same ...