(FREE download until September 14) Back in 2012, GFSI took the first step to review food fraud by creating the GFSI Food Fraud Think Tank. Addressing food fraud became a compliance requirement in 2018. This article reviews the development, compliance, and future of food fraud prevention.
Link to the free article (free until September 14, then requires a subscription or fee): https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1hUIS3I9F4RG28
I am grateful for the support and encouragement of the Trends in Food Science (TIFS) editorial team and reviewers, specifically Handling Editor Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. TIFS is an important and high-impact journal that provides very in-depth, expert reviewer support as well as a broad distribution.
TIFS is one of the very top food science journals and is ranked in the 99% percentile as the #2 of 359 journals in this category. Also, TIFS is the overall 216 position out of over 44,000 scholarly journals. Some of the journals cover very intense fields of study. The four around TIFS include Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, Light: Science and Applications, British Journal of Sports Medicine, and Quarterly Journal of Economics. [1]
From the article:
Highlights
- In 2022, the GSFI food fraud prevention activities were ten years old.
- GFSI followed a methodical process to create food fraud prevention requirements.
- Momentum was achieved by taking a holistic approach that addressed the root cause.
- GFSI has helped create a food industry-wide approach to the problem.
- The development continues along the hype cycle as true management systems are adopted.
Abstract
Background: Ten years ago, in 2012, the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) led the food industry when it created a standardized way to assess and manage food fraud incidents. GFSI adopted an interdisciplinary approach to not only detect food fraud but to understand and reduce the root causes. A series of crucial milestones guided the GFSI work, starting with creating their GFSI Food Fraud Think Tank through the Technical Working Group benchmark development, the adoption by the GSFI Board of Directors, and then development, implementation, and management by the food industry.
Scope and approach: This research presents the key GFSI food fraud prevention strategy development milestones from the historical records and a member of the original GFSI Food Fraud Think Tank.
Key findings and conclusions: GFSI achieved momentum by establishing a food industry-wide definition and scope of the problem. Further, focusing on all types of fraud and for all products – not just incoming goods and adulterant-substances – created a holistic and all-encompassing approach. The new topic of food fraud prevention is moving through the ‘hype cycle’ and is now in the ‘Scope of Enlightenment’ (e.g., processes and systems are simplified and optimized) and moving to the ‘Plateau of Productivity’ (e.g., standard operating procedures are adopted). GFSI, itself is maturing and evolving through the ‘hype cycle.’ The next ten years will include a more rigorous and thorough adoption of management systems with a continuous improvement process. The foundation is very theoretically and practically sound.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to acknowledge the support of the GFSI Board of Directors, the GFSI member companies, and those who supported the GFSI Food Fraud Think Tank activities and implementation. Specifically, recognition is due to the GFSI Board Member Project Sponsors Yves Rey and Frank Yiannas.
The GFSI Food Fraud Think Tank members contributed significantly to the activity and the ongoing implementation. For this manuscript, there is an acknowledgment of the comment, review, and support of this manuscript by the former Think Tank Chairperson, Dr. Petra Wissenburg (formerly of Danone and now of GreenFence), and member, Mr. Aldin Hilbrands (formerly of Royal Ahold and now of FSSC 22000).
Takeaway Points
- DOWNLOAD now while the document is still free: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1hUIS3I9F4RG28
- Fortunately, the early GFSI food fraud prevention scope was broad and theoretically sound – so the requirements have not changed.
- Food fraud prevention is a topic that will continue to mature and ‘right-size’ – in some cases, companies will refine to do more in specific areas, and for other companies, they may actually be able to be more efficient with fewer resources.
Footnote:
[1] For those who are interested, the CiteScore is 25.2, SNIP is 3.335, and SJR is 2.522.
- Percentile in a field: Many fields of study have their own journal category. The percentile rank identifies the journal’s rank divided by the total journals in this field. The more journals there are in a field results in higher percentile rankings being more influential.
- CIteScore: A metric for measuring journal impact using data from the Scopus database. The calculation of CiteScore for the current year is based on the number of citations received by a journal in that year for the journals published in the past three years, divided by the documents indexed in Scopus published in those three years.
- SJR (SCImago Journal Rank): measures the frequency with which content published in a journal was cited in other journals during the three previous years (compared to the previous two years with Journal Impact Factor).
- SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper): Measures contextual citation impact by weighting citations based on the total number of citations in a subject field.