Sofia Nogueira

My name is Sofia. I'm the manager of the brand-new, state-of-the-art molecular lab here at Jerónimo Martins. Jerónimo Martins is one of the biggest retailers in Portugal with more than 4,500 stores in Europe and South America and our main goal in the lab is to ensure the authenticity of our products.

Food fraud is the intentional addition or substitution of a species that should not be in that product, normally for financial gain. It can have a huge economic impact throughout the food chain and also at the safety level, because we don't know where the ingredients are coming from, so we are not sure if they are safe for human consumption.

It's really important to guarantee the reputation of our brand. The reputation is one of the biggest assets of a company and we know if our clients trust our products, they will probably come back and buy more. So for us, it's extremely important to guarantee the best products and we do that by testing the quality and authenticity of our product.

We protect ourselves from food fraud by working with reliable suppliers, by having a solid distribution network, and also, of course, by testing our products to ensure that when the finished product arrives to our consumer's plate, we know exactly what it is made of.

NGS is probably one of the most powerful technologies right now to test for food fraud. It's really cost-effective technology that allow us to screen a lot of samples at the same time. It's an untargeted approach, so we don't need to know in advance what are we looking for. Another advantage is that it works with DNA, which is a really stable molecule that resists a lot of pressure and temperature processes that food goes through. Of course, it has its limitations as DNA must be available, but overall, it's a really robust and reliable technology to test for food fraud.

In our lab, we test our products for its authenticity, and for that, we are doing next-generation sequencing. We have an S5 from Thermo Fisher Scientific.

NGS allows us to do a full screening of all the ingredients that are in our product instead of looking just for one species. So, we are able to find a lot more food fraud and also alert our suppliers that we can find anything even if we are not looking for something specifically.

My advice for the manufacturers that are doing food fraud testing is to work with trusted suppliers and to routinely test all of their products, from the raw materials until the finished product, because we never know when, where, or how the next food fraud will appear.