Food fraud protection

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Chances are you’ve been fooled a time or two when shopping at the grocery store. According to a professor at Dalhousie University who is also a committee member on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the food industry is full of fraud and it’s difficult to find all of the offenders. Common products guilty of fraud range from honey, to olive oils and even coffee, the more a food is processed the easier it is to add other ingredients.

Professor Sylvain Charlebois says the biggest offenders are fish distributors, with over 50 species of salmon being sold across the country. Charlebois says you might not get the type of fish you’re expecting.

“Its very easy to replace one species with another that would be cheaper and those cases are called economically motivated adulterations.”

Charlebois has also seen substitutions of meat where a consumer will buy pork when they think they’re buying beef. When it comes to coffee experts say you should buy the whole bean because you can actually see what you get but when you buy the kind that has already been ground down you can’t see what’s inside and in some cases there have been reports of twigs, roasted corn and barley used as filler.

“I suspect that most Canadians don’t even think about food fraud but it is happening and it’s happening a lot.”

Charlebois suggests consumers talk to their butchers, ask questions about their food and buy reputable brands.