.... if I had a dollar for every time I heard a food business say "But we get letters of guarantee" I'd be a millionaire!
Food fraud affects 10 percent of all food, so I guarantee your business has purchased ingredients that are fraud affected. If you're buying spices, seafood, honey, oil, fruit juices/concentrates or organic ingredients you are almost certainly receiving fraud-affected ingredients quite regularly.
It might not be your suppliers who are perpetrating the fraud, they might be unknowingly selling fraud-affected food to you.
Did you hear about the massive recall of cinnamon applesauce pouches in the US last November? They had so much lead in them that kids were getting lead poisoning. The problem was discovered by public health experts who were trying to figure out why kids had such high levels of lead in their blood. The lead turned out to be in the cinnamon used to make the applesauce. It was put in the cinnamon in the form of lead chromate, an industrial colorant, to make the cinnamon appear to be of a higher quality. This is food fraud.
The retailer (Dollar Tree) did not know the applesauce they purchased was fraud-affected. The wholesaler/importer that sold the pouches to Dollar Tree did not know either. The applesauce manufacturer did not know the cinnamon was adulterated with lead chromate. The company that sold the cinnamon to the manufacturer (a broker/trader) probably did not know about the adulteration either. Only the company that ground up the cinnamon bark, and added the lead chromate to it knew about the adulteration.
I bet the applesauce manufacturer has a letter of guarantee for that dodgy cinnamon in their files. Not worth the paper it's written on. Hundreds of people were poisoned because the fraud wasn't identified until tens of thousands of units had been sold. Millions of units were recalled.
Don't rely on letters of guarantee! Take the time to learn about food fraud and then start asking yourself which ingredients are the riskiest for your brand and your consumers. ... The Think Tank courses are fine but this (free) course is more succinct and practical. Good luck!
Regards,
Karen Constable
Food Fraud Prevention (VACCP) Programs | Food Fraud Training |
Consulting | Advisory | Compliance
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