Food Counterfeiting – A Million-dollar Business
Glycol in wine, motor oil in olive oil, horse meat in lasagne – food scandals cause outrage among the population with uncanny regularity; however, these major scandals are only the tip of the iceberg. Food fraud is a million-dollar business! Police, customs, national food authorities, and private-sector partners are now taking joint action against scammers in coordinated campaigns. Representatives from 78 countries worldwide participated in the OPSON VIII operation. Between December 2018 and April 2019, more than 67,000 controls were carried out in ports, airports, and food retail. During these inspections, investigators seized about 16,000 tons and 33 million litres of potentially dangerous counterfeit food and beverages with a total value of more than 100 million euros. Spectroscopy is increasingly being used in analysis to detect the counterfeits.1
There is hardly a foodstuff that counterfeiters do not use to scam customers. They have various tricks, the most common of which is to mix...
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