Developing systems to control food adulteration

The objective of this study is to explore the current strategies available to monitor and detect the economically and criminally motivated adulteration of food, identifying their strengths and weaknesses and recommend new approaches and policies to strengthen future capabilities to counter adulteration in a globalized food environment. There are many techniques used to detect the presence of adulterants, however this approach relies on the adulterant or means of substitution being “known” and no food item can ever be declared truly free of adulteration on that basis. Further techniques will verify the provenance claims made about a food product e.g. breed, variety etc. as well as techniques to identify original geographic location of food production. These consider wholeness, or not, of a food item and do not need to necessarily identify the actual adulterant. The conceptual framework developed in this research focuses on the process of predicting, detecting and reacting to economically and criminally motivated food adulteration.