Food Quality Magazine
ISSUE 02 | AUTUMN 2014
relatively simple to highly complex
supply chains. But the fact of the
matter is that the food chains we
rely on are becoming more and more complex as the result of globalization driven by changing weather
patterns, population demographics,
consumer tastes and the need for
greater efficiencies to keep the costs
of food down along with a host of
other factors.
One thing we have already learned
from our past experiences with food
fraud is that any supply chain is only
as strong as its weakest link. What
this means, in practical terms, is that
we must have an interoperable system to deter, detect, communicate,
delay, prevent, respond and mitigate
the consequences of food fraud incidents. Whatever system we develop
must be equally accessible from the
smallest farmer all the way up to
the huge retailers that sell their food wares across Europe. Moreover,
the system must facilitate real-time
communication among all of the different players along the supply chain
as food commodities make their way
from the farmer’s field to the consumer’s fork.
The Right Criteria
Whatever system we choose must
use the right criteria; that is science
and risk based measures of performance that actually reflect what
the perpetrators of food fraud can
and will do if given the opportunity.
Surely, our experience from the past
food fraud scandals across the globe
tells us that the “one size fits all” criteria (or lack thereof) we have used
to prevent food fraud in the past are
not good enough. To address this
challenge, we must have science and
risk based criteria that reflect the
specific food commodity at hand, its
location at any given segment on the
supply chain and the specific means,
methods and countermeasures that
can be applied to prevent, respond
to and mitigate the consequences of
a food fraud incident.
Intelligence Function
To effectively combat food fraud food companies must understand the
strategic and tactical environments
in which they operate. The strategic
signals of the potential for food fraud
in different parts of the world may
include the political stability of the
government, the strength of the rule
of law, presence of organized criminal activity such as human and drug
trafficking, child labor and other indicators that give rise to the existence
of organized crime. Tactical signals
of potential food fraud may include
the prevalence of fraud in general
and food fraud in particular in a certain country or region, the power of
local authorities to oversee the food
supply and enforce laws, attempts to
coerce and/or bribe company officials and other indicators.
Continuous Performance Assessment
If there is one thing we have learned
from past experience it is that vigilance is essential to prevent food
fraud. Vigilance means that we must
have quick and easy ways to assess our food fraud performance
on a continuing basis. One way to
accomplish this objective is to use
automated survey questionnaires to
ask the right questions of the right
people at the right time.
Combination Audit and Assessment
Functions
Asking the right questions of the
right people at the right time must
be supplemented by the conduct of
objective audits that validate performance. The measures of performance that are used by food companies
to assess their own performance
must be the same measures that food companies along the supply chain
are independently audited against.
Ending the Food Fraud Kabuki Dance
To end the food fraud kabuki dance
will require that the food industry
more closely embrace new technology that can help us to reduce good
concept to actual practice. As part
of our research we created our own
metadata repository of food related
events. POISON is where we harvest
food safety and food defense events,
including food fraud, from around
the globe and “reverse engineer” in-
cidents to identify and keep abreast
of the continuously evolving means
and methods used by food fraudsters. We use POISON to help us
derive the specific countermeasures
that can be used to thwart food
fraud by location along the supply
chain and commodity type.
Using POISON we have developed
a new generation of computer software that brings together sciencebased criteria, intelligence, continuous performance assessment and
combination audit and assessment
functions to create a single interoperable system among all elements of
the food supply chain and different
food commodities. You can learn
more about these next generation
information technology systems and
see them in action contacting Mr.
Bruce Becker at 540-645-1050 or
email at him at [email protected].
FoodQuestTQ: FoodQuestTQ LLC,
where the TQ st