Evershed Richard - Sorting the Beef from the Bull: The Science of Food Fraud Forensics

SORTING THE BEEF FROM THE BULL

Also available in the Bloomsbury Sigma series:

Sex on Earth by Jules Howard

p53: The Gene that Cracked the Cancer Code by Sue Armstrong

Atoms Under the Floorboards by Chris Woodford

Spirals in Time by Helen Scales

Chilled by Tom Jackson

A is for Arsenic by Kathryn Harkup

Breaking the Chains of Gravity by Amy Shira Teitel

Suspicious Minds by Rob Brotherton

Herding Hemingways Cats by Kat Arney

Electronic Dreams by Tom Lean

SORTING THE BEEF FROM THE BULL

THE SCIENCE OF FOOD FRAUD FORENSICS

Richard Evershed

&

Nicola Temple

Contents

To many, food fraud is about trivial acts of cheating undertaken by a few dodgy butchers or fast-food outlets. Perhaps it is a handful of sawdust popped into the sausage mix, or a little something added to the lamb to eke it out a bit. While there is no doubt such acts occur fairly frequently and they certainly shouldnt, food fraud is really much more complex, sinister and organised, and it has the potential to ruin businesses and the lives of those affected. I have had personal contact with a number of food-business operators who have told me their biggest dilemma is to decide if they should cheat in the same way as their competitors, or go out of business. I am also acutely aware that companies who do the right thing can lose contracts to those who clearly dont.

For as long as food has been prepared and sold there has been cheating. Looking at the history of food fraud is a wonderful way to explore the darker side of human nature. There have been scams that have poisoned people and scams that have killed people, but most often the fraud goes undetected. This is the business model of the fraudster, of course. The longer he or she, or in many cases they, get away with it, the more profit they make from their deception. My own view of the horse-meat fraud, based on intelligence I was able to source, was that it had been going on for at least five years before a random test alerted the nation to the scale of the problem. I uncovered a scam with oregano in the UK recently, and a few reliable sources have told me that this had been going on for a lot longer.

Food fraud becomes food crime when the level of organisation increases to the point that formal or informal networks of perpetrators are involved, and have differing roles in the criminal activity. Firstly, there is the fraud inventor, i.e. the person (or persons) who devises the way of cheating; there are some excellent examples of the ingenuity of such deceptions in this insightful book. Secondly, there are those that deal with the logistics the people who organise the transportation of the frequently produced goods across countries, borders and, in some cases, across the globe. Thirdly, there are those that develop the countermeasures to detection working out how to evade laboratory testing and auditing. The final expert of the gang is often the enforcer, those that threaten and bully the most vulnerable in the food industry to turn a blind eye or become complicit in the fraud itself. I have met some of these at first hand, and know the degree of menace that comes with them. Would I be brave enough to stand up to them if I was a small food company that realised the police wouldnt be overly bothered about a food fraud issue? I have often wrestled with this thought, and on a good day believe I might.

Sorting the Beef from the Bull gives a fascinating insight into many of the complexities I have referred to. The examples selected should enable the reader to have a much better understanding of the driving forces behind food fraud, the lengths the cheats will go to in order to make a profit and the ways in which science is trying to help deliver the means of introducing more deterrents to one of the worlds fastest-growing industries. Barely a day goes by now without news of another scam cropping up somewhere in the world. Worryingly, quite a lot of them could impact the UK in a way that would make Horsegate feel like hors doeuvres.

Professor Chris Elliott

Pro Vice Chancellor, University of Belfast

Bird eggs are perfect structures that contain all of the materials needed to support the growth of a new life or, in many unlucky cases, provide a highly nutritious meal to any number of different critters. It takes 25 hours for an egg to form within a female bird; one hour for the microscopic egg cell to attach to a globule of yolk and pass through the oviduct, where it may (or may not) become fertilised, and then reach the lime-producing section of its journey. There it will sit for 24 hours as it is coated with a hard shell to protect its precious contents. The finishing touch is a layer of pigment to help camouflage the egg, which is added just before it is laid much like a wax spray that is applied as a car leaves the car wash. Its truly a remarkable process.

Unfertilised versions of these little packages, mostly of the chicken variety, have become an important part of our diet. They are the basis of the full English breakfast, the foundation for a slathering of hollandaise sauce (not to mention part of the hollandaise sauce itself), and when the whites are whipped into a frenzy with sugar they become the most delicate of meringues.

Now, what if we told you that we could emulate that perfect little package in a fraction of the time the chicken takes to make it? All you need is a few ingredients that can be purchased online. First, take some sodium alginate. This comes from brown algae and when it binds with water it forms a viscous gum. Its commonly used in the food industry to increase viscosity and also largely responsible for those gelatinous chunks that you find in wet cat food. Mix this sodium alginate with water and stir for about one and a half hours. Then add some gelatin, which you can buy at your local supermarket for making trifles, jams or yogurt, and mix this in thoroughly. Leave it for about 10 hours until any bubbles have disappeared. Then add in some sodium benzoate and alum both widely used food preservatives. Maybe throw in some lactones if you have them (if not, theyre available online), as these are the compounds that contribute to the aroma of butter, cheese, eggs and other foods. This is our base substance and it can be made well in advance.

Next, put some of this mixture into a bowl and add a little colouring agent something labelled orange red powder might work. This is your yolk mixture and you can now pour it into yolk-shaped moulds. Dip these moulds briefly into edible calcium chloride. This is a permitted food additive thats used to firm up soybean curds for tofu and is commonly used as an electrolyte in sports drinks. This will just help to coagulate those yolks so they stay together nicely.

Pour a portion of the remaining egg white mixture into a plastic mould, add your egg yolk and dip that whole thing into the calcium chloride again to stabilise it all. Finally, pluck out your firm gelatinous egg and dip it into a mixture of melted paraffin wax and gypsum powder (plaster) to create that wonderful hard shell. Simple, really, and in a 25-hour period you can pop out way more eggs than a chicken can! They can be placed into egg cartons and sold at the market and profits are double to quadruple those of traditional chicken farmers. Oh, and a little bonus is that any leftover egg white mixture can be dyed green or purple and with a little added juice (just a splash), youve got yourself some fake grapes as well! No chicken can do that.