Protecting consumers from counterfeit food
Low’s research explores microscopic tagging solution

October 22, 2010

By Mark Ferguson

Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan are developing a system that would trace food products from the farm to the plate in an attempt to combat one of the biggest problems facing the industry today – counterfeiting.

Nicholas Low, professor of food and bioproduct sciences in the College of Agriculture and Bioresources, said counterfeiting is usually associated with products like watches or clothes, but the food industry is just as susceptible to fraud, tampering and mislabeling. That is where his research comes in to play.

“Usually, the way you monitor a product is through a bar code,” he said. “There is a tre-endous amount of information there - but it’s all external. A barcode doesn’t tell you if someone has tampered with the product, especially when it’s food. So, we’re developing techniques where you can trace the food right from where it’s grown all the way to the plate.”

Low said his invention – a microscopic tag or marker that can be safely inserted into food – works much like a barcode but at the microscopic level. He is working on a carbohydrate-based tag for food products and a genetic DNA tag for non-food items like fabrics or plastics.

“I had this idea about eight years ago when I was working at Proctor and Gamble. There were incidents where products we were purchasing were not what they were supposed to be, so we had to stop selling them to the consumer. We could monitor the containers, but not what was inside the containers and that’s what is really important.”

Low said the reason his idea was not in the research stage earlier was a matter of feasibility, but food tampering has increased around the world. Companies are now more interested in protecting their brand and making sure that the products they sell are what they say they are.

A recent study from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration indicates that fish is the most frequently faked food that Americans buy. For example, a cheap fish such as farmed Atlantic salmon would be sold as “wild Alaskan salmon” in the grocery store. Olive oil, another one of the most mislabeled foods according to the FDA, is often mixed with soybean oil, and honey and maple syrup are often mixed with diluted corn syrup or sugar-water as well, the report says.

Low figures about five to 10 per cent of the products Canadians buy in the store has been altered or mislabeled, and this is where his tracing system could put an end to food fraud – whether it is a multi-vitamin, a wild salmon or juice.

“Think about a company selling orange juice,” he said. “They could add an internal tracing tag to their fruit so they can monitor and check the product and be able to tell if the juice was adulterated somewhere along the line. The tag would basically tell you if the product is yours from the tree to the glass.”

Identifying the internal tag is relatively straightforward too, using a graphing instrument that can read the tag and make sure it is the same as the one that was inserted in the first place, said Low.

Although the idea is very scientific, Low thinks that the social aspect of this is just as important. “This is the first time for me that I’ve done a project not just for the science. This is a project to make sure that we, as consumers, are involved in what is happening to industry all over the world.”

Low is collaborating on the tracing system with researcher Bob Hanner from the University of Guelph along with several colleagues and graduate students from the U of S.

The internal tagging system is already about two years in the making and patents are pending on the technology. One company (that Low wishes to remain unnamed for the time being) is giving a “great deal of support” to see how well the system works.

Even with that support, cost might be the biggest challenge to the tracing system, said Low, “and we don’t know what the cost will be per item yet.” If it is expensive, it may only be used for expensive products, and that is not ideal, he said.

“The tracing system has to be easy to use, accurate, and hopefully not too expensive. These are all hurdles, but we’re very excited and very hopeful and we’re a long way down the road with this already.”