Food has been adulterated for thousands of years.  Examples include adding water to wine, saw dust to spices, and corn sugar to honey.  The primary motivation for food adulteration is economic gain.  Diluting an expensive premium food, like extra virgin olive oil, with a less expensive food, like canola oil, can increase profits of the manufacturer.  Since the foods are typically adulterated with other foods, there is usually no threat to the health of the consumer.  In some cases, however, the fraudsters use toxic chemicals.  For example, when adulterating milk with melamine.  The increasingly sophisticated techniques used by the food fraud criminals present a challenge for regulatory agencies that are tasked with monitoring food safety and food quality, like the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), US Department of Agriculture (USDA), and US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).<br/>This talk provides an overview of the most advanced tools available to fight food fraud.  It describes the analytical detection methods and state-of-the-art instrumentation for the most frequently adulterated foods, including olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil, milk, meat, and honey.  Specific techniques covered include GCMS, LCMS/MS, UV/vis, FTIR, and MALDI-TOF and the presented data compare pure and adulterated foods.

Bona fide or bogus - the importance of analytical instrumentation for detecting food fraud

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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