ISSUE 03 | JULY 2016
food fraud mitigation plans. Here,
we will take a closer look at three
important aspects of food fraud risk
mitigation, specifically: management
of vulnerabilities within your supply
chain, market intelligence around
food ingredients, and adulteration
detection methods.
Vulnerability
Assessment
and
Management
Since food fraud is an intentional act
committed by knowledgeable fraudsters, a traditional food safety risk
assessment framework is not a suffi-
Food Quality Magazine
cient approach to the problem. Most
organizations recommend identification and assessment of vulnerable
ingredients and supply chains based
on an evaluation of multiple factors.
The results of this type of a vulnerability assessment can then be used
to create a food fraud risk mitigation
plan. USP outlined the many factors
that can contribute to food fraud
vulnerability in the Food Fraud Mitigation Guidance (FFMG), published
in 2015 in the Third Supplement to
the Food Chemicals Codex 97. The
FFMG guides users through a process of evaluating and ranking nine
contributing factors to food fraud
vulnerability and creating a food
fraud mitigation plan. The contributing factors are listed below, with
real-world examples for each:
• Supply chain: what is the degree of
vertical integration in the supply chain for a particular ingredient, or are
purchases made on the open market?
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Available at www.foodfraud.org
Figure 3. Prior to the discovery of melamine adulteration of milk products in China, the Chinese dairy system was
comprised of many small farmers and a complex system to collect and consolidate the milk. This system benefitted
from flexibility, but arguably increased fraud risk.
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