The Food Mafia is an investigative report aired on the German public TV station 3Sat yesterday (19. Oct 2018). It was a broad coverage about how food fraud can happen, why it goes uncovered for so long and which role government authorities and state attorneys play in preventing fraudsters from being caught.
Here are the highlights:
Olive Oil Fraud in Italy
The Italian company Valpesana has for decades bought inferior olive oil and turned it into extra virgin. Only because whistleblower and chief chemists no longer wanted to sign for false certificates, the story came to light. Valpesana is a major supplier to European retailers, including REWE. According to Fabio Lattanzio, the whistleblowing chief chemist of the company, Valpesana was actively searching for the lowest olive oil quality in the market, then asked the chief chemists to sign it off as high quality extra virgin olive oil. According to prosecutor Aldo Natalini, a simple chemical analysis would have not revealed that this was adulterated oil. It needed a whistleblower from inside to reveal the tricks with which such fraud was committed. The Italian police eventually wire-trapped the owner and a telephone conversation revealed the widespread fraud. The court sentenced the owner to four years in prison without parole. The highest sentence so far for committing food fraud. However, the owner’s attorney appealed against it and it remains to be seen if the sentence will be upheld. What was more interesting was that the buyers, who – according to the telephone conversations knew that this was adulterated oil – did not receive any sentence for food fraud but merely a minor penalty for deceit. If this is the right way to deter fraudsters which put consumers at risk, I leave for the reader to decide.
Hazelnut Adulteration in Germany, and Why Fraudsters Don’t Get Caught
The second story is interesting when seen in context with our previous report on how European member states create opportunities for fraudsters. Here we reported that governments don’t even control high-risk products where they know such controls are warranted – according to the report from the European Commission. Now, Germany is one of the countries where I personally know that government control authorities are very active in trying to detect and prevent food fraud. But what can they do if the state attorney does not issue search warrants?
Several of my friends and colleagues work at the Bavarian Food Control Authority, LGL. I work with them in committees where methods for detection of food fraud are developed. I know LGL, like many other government control authorities in other German counties make significant efforts to protect consumers from fraudulent products. But what can they do if they discover suspicious activity? The TV report shows how the LGL Food Fraud team of Peter Wallner developed, jointly with a university, a food fraud prediction tool. The tool monitors numerous factors, including market volumes and prices. The team discovered that hazelnuts were “contaminated” with peanuts. If you are a peanut allergic, such contamination can be life-threatening. The team seized samples and confirmed their initial findings. However, the seller of the product simply claimed that it wasn’t him doing the adulteration, but his supplier. In order to validate this, the LGL team asked the state attorney to issue a search warrant for the supplier. Several months after, no such search warrant has been issued. Apparently, the state attorney is busy dealing with other criminal cases and food fraud is not high on his list. Let’s just hope he is not peanut allergic. This is exactly the way, the system should not function. If you know there is fraud and cannot follow up because the state attorney is stalling a search warrant, measures need to be taken to remedy the situation – urgently.
How moldy mozzarella gets a nice flavor
In 2015, the Italian police raided a cheese factory. Instead of finding high-value mozzarella, they found a mixture of rotten mozzarella and cow’s milk.
Rotten mozzarella (Source: Europol/3Sat)
To mimic freshness, the cheese was washed in acid, and then smoked in a lorry with burning rubbish to imitate the typical mozzarella taste.
Carabinieri inspecting lorry used to smoke mozzarella (Source: Europol/3Sat)
Organized Crime
Interpol staff stated that food fraud has become more and more attractive to crime cartels, which generate more money with food fraud than with drugs. In several cases, the Italian mafia was allegedly involved in large-scale food fraud operations, and Europol stated that they use the same channels for trafficking fraudulent foods that they had already established for trafficking drugs.
Red Gold
The report showed how General Li, a Chinese businessman, is building a global tomato concentrate imperium. Supported by his government, he is buying traditional tomato paste and ketchup producing companies, supplying the market with inexpensive tomato puree from China, some labeled as Italian to attract a higher price. According to his own statement, his best customers include Heinz and Nestlé.
Fake Italian tomato concentrate (Source: 3Sat)
The report showed that tomatoes, which are not typically eaten in China, are produced under conditions which are reminiscent of slave labor. Young children help their parents harvest tomatoes all day for 80 Chinese Yuan (approx. 10 Euros) per day and person. The harvested tomatoes are processed to tomato puree and then markets around the globe are flooded with this product, driving domestic businesses out.
In terms of food fraud, one of the factory workers of the Chinese factory stated that they use up to 50% of non-tomato “additives” in such concentrates, none of which is labeled. Such adulterants include maltodextrin and starch. One might wonder why European authorities, where, according to the report, the majority of tomato concentrate is coming from China, are not investigating these products.
ILSI Europe
Clearly, there are still a large number of known gaps. A new Food Authenticity Task Force of ILSI Europe, consisting of members from government, universities and food industry are working to identify these gaps and propose measures to remedy. The first results of this task force work will be presented at the FoodIntegrity meeting in Nantes, in mid-November.
