To help address food fraud, a training workshop was held to advance the ANSTO-led project “Combatting Food Fraud Using Nuclear Technology (CFF)”, as part of the Forum for Nuclear Cooperation in Asia (FNCA) in Sydney on 14-16 October 2024.
| Food Fraud In today’s complex food supply chain, transparency is more critical than ever. Food fraud—intentional alteration, misrepresentation, or substitution of products—undermines food security and poses risks to the environment, health, and consumer trust. This pervasive issue affects both developed and developing countries, with less-developed nations particularly vulnerable. The World Health Organization reports that around 1.6 million people fall ill daily from contaminated food, resulting in 420,000 deaths annually. Additionally, global producers face estimated losses of $40 to $50 billion each year. |
Dr Debashish Mazumder, Stable Isotope Ecologist, ANSTO, who is the leader of this project, said this project aims to undertake research to establish a food provenance technology platform and a federated database for key priority food items to mitigate incidents of fraud in the supply chain.
As part of this initiative, previous online training workshops in 2023 led to an agreement on the food items each country will use for the project: a common seafood commodity (Tiger prawn) and an additional item specific to each participating country. All participating countries which harvest prawns will contribute samples. Other food to be investigated include turmeric, rice, mango, honey, coffee, plum, meat and milk.
The outcomes of this project will contribute to the region through developing scientific capability in the application of nuclear analysis techniques in food traceability.
Representatives from the participating countries, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, The Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam sent participants to Australia, with representatives from Japan attending virtually. Two observers from Fiji, who expressed interest in the project, also attended in person.
The goal of this workshop was to build upon previous engagements and discuss the methodological framework for the federated database of elemental fingerprints of food produce that each country will use during the project.
Read more on ANSTO website