The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has its own police force for tackling fraudulent foods and drugs...
At last month’s 9th Annual Anti-Counterfeiting and Brand Protection Summit held in Midtown West, NY, a fact sheet from DuPont said counterfeiting cost U.S. businesses $200 billion to $250 billion annually, affecting 92 percent of Fortune 500 companies. Food and beverages are only a slice of that, of course, but consider that Russia has documented $3.3 billion in annual losses due just to counterfeit vodka, the total for food and beverage products would probably be staggering.
Michigan State University’s Anti-Counterfeiting and Product Protection Program has developed a national data base for tracking counterfeit food by looking for such characteristics as:
-Diluted oil, 16 percent of counterfeit food cases involve olive oil.
-Diluted milk, 14 percent of counterfeit food involved watered down milk.
-Adulterated honey, 7 percent of counterfeit food involved were adulterated sugar and corn.
MSU’s Anti-Counterfeiting program even has a top ten list for food most likely to be phony. Making the list are: vanilla extract, maple syrup, grape wine, apple juice, coffee, orange juice, saffron, honey, milk, and olive oil."
Food Safety Endangered Worldwide by Increased Food Counterfeiting
By Dan Flynn