Abstract
This article describes the challenges of regulating and monitoring traceability and certification systems, and of ensuring the safety and authenticity of foodstuffs imported into Europe, particularly focusing on palm oils. Several measures have been implemented within palm oil supply chains to ensure that traceability can be monitored. However, these supply chains can be highly complex and, more often than not, full traceability is not achievable for stakeholders who only have access to existing systems. In Europe, measures for authenticity of palm oils are not presently as robust as those for other vegetable oils, which means that sometimes unsafe and inauthentic palm oils, often already incorporated into other products, can make their way onto supermarket shelves for unsuspecting consumers. Such instances are usually rare and are normally detected before products are purchased by consumers. Nevertheless, it is still the case that the addition of illegal and potentially harmful additives to palm oils destined for export to Europe is a regular occurrence, alerts for which can be found on the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) portal. As the European Union has committed to only accept authenticated “sustainably sourced” palm oils, it is even more important to ensure that such imported oils are really from the declared source, preferably via proven analytical methods. This makes it more important that accurate and robust techniques are developed and implemented for verifying the provenance and authenticity of palm oils and their downstream products. Here, we review the underlying regulatory framework relating to traceability and authentication and assess some new and emerging chemically-based technologies that should contribute to improving the monitoring of palm oil and other vegetable oil supply chains in Europe and elsewhere.
Highlights
Over the past few decades, consumer trust and confidence in the official regulatory bodies that establish and monitor food safety and reliability standards has been weakened
This is interesting in view of the fact that in the early 2000s, the European Union (EU) had initially encouraged the import of vegetable oils, including palm oils, as part of a policy to increase the use of carbonneutral biofuels as replacements for non-renewable fossil fuels
Can the EU realistically rely on current traceability measures, which even many industry members say are weak and unreliable at present? Or will they look to other methods, such as some of the new and emerging state-of-the-art analytical techniques for traceability purposes? In this case, it is instructive to consider some of the methods that are already used in olive oil and other vegetable oil supply chains as well as newly emerging analytical technologies as will be discussed
Summary
Over the past few decades, consumer trust and confidence in the official regulatory bodies that establish and monitor food safety and reliability standards has been weakened. This follows a series of historical and more recent disease outbreaks, food contamination incidents, animal welfare violations, sustainability violations, concerns over factors such as antibiotic use in livestock and even the use of some genetically modified organisms in food crops. The three introduced schemes: Protected Designation Of Origin (PDO), Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) and Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG) were designed to ensure the quality and origin of foodstuffs produced in Europe. These are very important initiatives, but they leave open the question of “how we can most effectively monitor and assure the quality of foodstuffs produced elsewhere and imported into Europe?”
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