Lying labels: food fraud & adulteration

Grocery shopping has become more and more of an annoyance recently. Not only because every shopping trip is a painful reminder of how inflation and the cost-of-living crisis are teaming up to mug me in broad daylight. But deciphering labels and the fluorescent lights are now working together to give me migraines.

I’ve been noticing the amount of added ingredients added to just about everything and the questionable looking burgers labelled “real chicken”, I’m even looking at the vegetables funny now and I’m not wrong. Concerned about the added chemicals on and in the food I was buying for an extra 89p I delved into the secretive world of food.

Upon learning more, I realised that desperately informing my friends and family wasn’t enough. This shopping list guide is to make grocery shopping easier, cleaner and safer.

Grocery Manual

Milk

There is an increased pressure on dairy farmers due to the increased power of supermarkets exacerbated by leaving the EU which has meant a reduction in basic payments to farmers. A result of this is fake milk. With increasing food fraud in the dairy industry methods such as fraudulent heat treatment, dilution and extending shelf life are used to increase yield and profit.

Whole milk is diluted with water and labelled in supermarkets as ‘whole milk’. Similarly, heat treated milk is mixed with fresh milk and sold as ‘fresh milk’. Sometimes milk is manipulated with microbial growth inhibitors, with no declaration, to increase shell life.

Due to mislabelled products, this can be hard to detect. Buying from brands that you trust is a great way to get a reliable product. You can search for a brand and find a clear ethos that matches your consumer needs and ethical views. For dairy products, most products can provide farm-to-shop details which can help your decision.

Lettuce

Lettuce, among other leafy greens, is a surprising killer. It was a salad that was responsible for a recent outbreak of E. coli in the UK infecting 150 people in December of 2022. The cause is often, runoff from animal waste getting into the water or soil for vegetables which contaminate produce.

Former USDA under secretariat for food safety, the former highest-ranking food safety official in the US, admitted she “steers clear” of romaine lettuce in the US and after that statement, I recommend you do the same. It seems since a US law was passed reclassifying E. Coli as an adulterant in ground beef, E. Coli is no longer a concern in ground beef products.

This legislation was passed following a Jack in the Box hamburger E. Coli scandal that killed 4 children and infected 732 people in the States. Now, however, when eating a hamburger in the US the thing you should fear most is the lettuce.

As far as vegetables go, this is a fairly serious example, and it is key to note that the US food regulations are very different from how it is in the UK. But with increasing trade routes opening with the US since leaving the EU it doesn’t hurt to be aware and it clearly is an issue we face in the UK too.

Bacteria isn’t the only adulterant contaminating our vegetables in the UK; non-organic produce is sprayed with pesticides, insecticides, and fungicides. Before you think you’ll save yourself the time of washing your fruits and vegetables the chemical sprays used on produce grown in the UK are known human carcinogens, reproductive and developmental toxins, can have adverse effects on sexual function and fertility, reduce the number and functionality of sperm and cause miscarriages, birth defects and kidney disease. 

So please wash your fruits and vegetables. Additionally, it is important to be thorough when washing as farmers like to use sprays that can’t be simply washed off by a heavy rain spell. Meaning, a quick rinse isn’t going to ensure you and your family aren’t ingesting these harmful chemicals. Soak them in water with a tsp or 2 of bicarbonate of soda for 12-15 mins and rinse. It’s worth it, I promise. Or alternatively, buy organic, I’d still wash though.

PSA: Avoid leafy greens from the US

Eggs

Mislabelled eggs are a common type of food fraud. For example, caged eggs can be labelled as free range, or the location can be obscured. This may not sound like a serious issue for concern, but ambiguity about the egg’s journey can lead to contaminated eggs being distributed unknowingly.

British Lion eggs have worked hard to ensure that salmonella is mostly eradicated from the British egg supply. This can’t be said for other countries and salmonella is a serious concern in similar food systems. 90% of British eggs are British Lion eggs so their logo is one you can trust.

Chicken

Have you ever wondered why chickens are so big?

Due to our love for white chicken meat the chickens we eat today have been bred and genetically modified over generations to produce a larger meat yield per chicken. This has led to several problems of its own, especially for the chickens, but there’s in particular you should consider when at the supermarket.

Antibiotics are given to chickens as a growth agent, as well as, for disease control. Antibiotics aren’t inherently an issue but overexposure to them is. Every time we take antibiotics, bacteria that are resistant to the antibiotics stay and reproduce and can even pass on their antibiotic resistance to other bacteria cells. Therefore, the more antibiotics consumed the greater the risk of developing illnesses that are resistant to medicine.

This is a major issue when antibiotics are in our food that is potentially consumed daily. On a large scale, this could result in untreatable salmonella outbreaks. But also, if you got sick your antibiotic resistance might just be too high for you to be treated effectively.

Organic Chicken

Farmers don’t give antibiotics to their chickens, reducing the risk of antibiotic-resistant salmonella. All British hens and chickens, however, are vaccinated for salmonella. Additionally, they are free-range, and their feed is organic. Allowing chickens to have free range at the farm allows for healthier and a more natural life which causes significantly fewer health problems for the chickens and therefore you.

As the UK increases poultry product trade with the US, consumers must be aware.

Salmonella is an alarming issue for the US food supply chain due to minimal regulation and lenient legislation, harnessed by the lobbyist’s priority on profit. Molecular biology Mansour Samadpour said, after testing 150 raw chicken samples in the US, that if you are buying raw chicken in the US “your primary assumption should be that it contains pathogens such as salmonella and campylobacter”.

This might sound like a conspiracy, but it has been a well-known fact for decades that raw poultry in the US is contaminated. So much so that it is considered the responsibility of the cook to cook the salmonella out of the meat. They even pushed this message through government TV commercials targeting housewives.

In fact, it is completely legal to sell chicken that contains salmonella as by US law salmonella is not considered an adulterant. This allows profit for the poultry and meat industry despite salmonella’s deadly threat to public safety. This affects the safety of poultry-related products such as eggs.

PSA: Avoid US poultry products.

Honey

Factors like the increased use of pesticides and climate change are declining the number of pollinators. This causes a myriad of problems, one being fake honey. Honey is often substituted for sugar syrup blends claiming to be all-natural honey. The truth is that a recent investigation found that just under 50% of its honey samples collected within the EU were fake.

What’s worse is all 10 samples from the UK were found to be fake. China is known to adulterate their honey and as the UK is one of the biggest importers of honey from China we have been massively affected. With misleading labels, it is becoming increasingly hard to tell the real from the fake.

My advice is, to inspect labels for an origin country or farm. Even better if a brand is transparent about its ethos and honey making methods. Stick to locally made honey when you can and trust your tastebuds. It pays to know where your food comes from.

Orange Juice

To get greater yield orange juice can be fraudulently adulterated with water, pulp wash, sugars, and additives.

Check labels and buy from brands you trust. This can be difficult as one of the major issues with food fraud is deception. Labels don’t always tell the truth. Again trust your tastebuds, If you buy fresh orange juice and it tastes watery, try a different brand. Look at the words being used; I hate to say it but analysing those poems in English Literature might come in handy now.

I hope the takeaway from this doesn’t produce pointless fear, it can be scary and researching this topic has been but there are ways to shop safely and education is at the heart of it.  

Supermarket image by Alexa from Pixabay.