A comprehensive strategy to detect the fraudulent adulteration of herbs: The oregano approach

Connor Black,Simon A Haughey,Olivier P Chevallier,Pamela Galvin-King,Christopher T Elliott

doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2016.05.004

Connor Black, Simon A Haughey + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2016.05.004

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Journal: Food Chemistry	Publication Date: May 3, 2016
Citations: 130	License type: cc-by

Affiliation: Queen's University Belfast

Abstract

Fraud in the global food supply chain is becoming increasingly common due to the huge profits associated with this type of criminal activity. Food commodities and ingredients that are expensive and are part of complex supply chains are particularly vulnerable. Both herbs and spices fit these criteria perfectly and yet strategies to detect fraudulent adulteration are still far from robust. An FT-IR screening method coupled to data analysis using chemometrics and a second method using LC-HRMS were developed, with the latter detecting commonly used adulterants by biomarker identification. The two tier testing strategy was applied to 78 samples obtained from a variety of retail and on-line sources. There was 100% agreement between the two tests that over 24% of all samples tested had some form of adulterants present. The innovative strategy devised could potentially be used for testing the global supply chains for fraud in many different forms of herbs.

Highlights

Herbs and spices play a significant part in the diets of many as they are important ingredients in a multitude of foods, beverages, medicines and cosmetics
Fourier-Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) is a technique that is based on the absorbance of light at particular wavelengths and has been a popular methodology in detecting food adulteration
For the supervised chemometric model, Orthogonal Partial Least Squares Discriminate Analysis (OPLS-DA) was used with the same pre-processing parameters used for the Principal Components Analysis (PCA) plot

Summary

Introduction

Herbs and spices play a significant part in the diets of many as they are important ingredients in a multitude of foods, beverages, medicines and cosmetics. With consumers having greater access and a desire to use these products, the demand has increased vastly over the last thirty years making it a multibillion dollar industry (Furth & Cox, 2004). Marieschi, Torelli, Poli, Sacchetti, and Bruni (2009) stated that the global herb and spice trade was worth $2.97 billion with the EU market amounting to 520 thousand tonnes and a value of €1.8 billion. Motivated adulteration (EMA) of food is a common concept, which has occurred within the food industry since trading began (Spink & Moyer, 2013). As is the case with any food commodity, there is a greater possibility of food adulteration when the demand and prices increase and when complex supply chains are involved.

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