Many companies in the food industry have to deal with the fraudulent activities of their competitors such as the intentional counterfeiting, substitution, adulteration or mislabeling of food to gain an economic advantage. Many of these tricks go unnoticed by consumers, law-abiding companies, and even government agencies. Additionally, there are no standardized methods to help agencies with this highly specialized problem. The tea industry is seeing an increase in mislabeled geographical origin of some specialty teas (i.e. Pu'erh tea, which must be from a specific region in China). This study uses two different technologies (microwave digestion and ICPMS/QQQ) and their advantages towards this food related issues. This data was then subjected to multivariate statistical analyses (PCA and CVA) to correlate the metal content of true Pu'erh region tea, to try and determine a model for true Pu'erh teas. Using this approach we have developed a potential tool for detecting fraudulent tea products.

Elemental analysis of highly specialty teas for authentication

248th National Meeting (2014)

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