While we might have grown accustomed to schemes, scams, deceptions, evasions and omissions, the notion that the food on our plate is lying to us remains hard to swallow.
Following recent revelations regarding equine lasagna in the United Kingdom, many consumers are becoming more concerned about the deliberate mislabeling of food.
Approximately five to 10 per cent of food sold in Canada may contain some type of discrepancy between the list of ingredients and the goods inside the package, according to researcher and University of Saskatchewan professor Kevin Low.
With a background in chemistry, Low has been fascinated with food fraud since pioneering a system to detect carbohydrate-based sweeteners in "pure" orange juice 25 years ago.
"It is like being a detective and finding out who did the dirty deed and why," he writes in an email.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency receives about 40 complaints a year related to food fraud, according to media relations co-ordinator Suzi Beck.
While the problem does not seem to be increasing, consumers are becoming increasingly vigilant when it comes to truth in labeling, according to Low.
Manufacturers of vanilla, honey, maple syrup, and coffee have all substituted inferior ingredients in the last 20 years, says Low.
More recently, U.K. officials discovered the popular Findus beef lasagna contained as much as 100 per cent horse meat.
While ear tags can be used to track an animal from the farm to slaughterhouse, those systems can also be subverted, sending a ripple effect through the entire global food economy, according to Low.
"These external tags can be removed and changed easily," says Low. "This is what happened in the recent horse meat scandal, as the current information indicates that the meat was produced in Romania and was clearly labeled as horse meat. It was then shipped to France where it miraculously changed species."
With just a few molecules, Low believes a new system of traceability could link the food on your fork to its farm or factory of origin with complete accuracy.
Called an internal oligomolecular tag, a small portion of molecules would be added to food at some stage of the food chain, giving the food a distinct signature, which could be tested at any stage to indicate validity.
The tag, which is safe and stable, according to Low, would show the geographical origin of the food.
If the concentration of the tag was altered, an examiner might determine the product had been debased, according to Low.
Low is currently hoping to produce the tag in commercial quantities and conduct pilot studies, but a funding shortfall has waylaid those plans.
The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada funded Low's project for 18 months, but soon after Low and his colleague Robert Hanner were approved for another three years of research the federal government shifted course.
"The federal government decided in late 2010 that food would no longer be a strategically funded research area," Low writes. "Our project has been in limbo for the past two years as I look for funding."
While Canada has so far avoided high profile cases of food fraud, other countries have not been so fortunate.
In an apparent attempt to simulate a high-protein content in several milk products, a manufacturer in China added the nitrogen-rich chemical melamine to its milk in 2008.
Approximately 300,000 children suffered kidney damage and other ailments and six babies died, according to a New York Times article.
After spending six years working in B.C. abattoirs (slaughterhouses) and recently joining non-profit organization Food Secure Canada, Abra Brynne says Canadians can be fairly certain the meat we're eating is genuine.
"My experience with a lot of the abattoirs, is yes, the consumer could have been very confident," says Brynne. "My experience with provincially inspected plants is that they, for the most part, only have access to shorter supply chain opportunities."
While Canada has legislated truth in labeling laws, Brynne says the competition of the marketplace can be a concern.
"I know from some of the smaller suppliers, in order to get the price points that they need in order to get into grocery stores, they have to . . . shift their ingredients if something becomes out of reach in terms of the price point," she says.
Olive oil and fresh fish are two of the likeliest offenders, according to some reports.
In his book, Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, author Tom Mueller delves into what he describes as a largely unregulated and frequently fraudulent extra-virgin olive oil market.
Rather than using olive pulp, many manufacturers dose sunflower or canola seeds with chlorophyll and pass off the fruits of their deception as extra-virgin olive oil, according to Mueller.
In another example, researchers from Columbia University found some form of fraud in 19 out of 31 sushi restaurants they tested in New York and Denver. In nine restaurants, genetic tests revealed the sushi in question to be endangered southern bluefin tuna.
In other cases albacore tuna was discovered to be escolar, which the team described as a "health hazard" in their report.
Many concerns about food fraud can be assuaged by buying organic, according to Brynne.
"The traceability is an inherent part of the certification system," she says.
"If you're a processor getting organic certification, you have to provide information on every single ingredient that you use."
