The importance of testing traceability for food label compliance

My name is Sandra Mourinha Chaves. I'm the CEO and the head of R&D and Innovation at WeNou. WeNou is a lab that works mostly on food authenticity and safety.

People today are much more critical and much more conscientious about what food safety and food integrity is than they were before. Now, they want to know exactly what they are eating and understand if it is authentic and safe.

All the components that are in a food product should be clearly stated on the label. Taking this into account, we can define food fraud as any adulteration of a food product that makes it not in accordance with the label.

Next-generation sequencing or NGS, that is what we call routinely, is a very powerful technology for food analysis and the detection of food fraud.

First, NGS is based on DNA analysis. DNA is one of the most resistant cell molecules that you can analyze. It's very resistant even when very aggressive processing food methods are applied, like sterilization. So, you can almost always retrieve DNA from the products.

Second, NGS is what we call an untargeted method. This means that we don't have to define, in the beginning, what kind of component you are going to search for. You can make a screening panel of the components that are in the food product, get the list of them, and then you are able to compare that list with the label and understand if it is correct and is in compliance with the food label or not.

Today, we have very, very complex food chains. Materials come from countries all over the world and go through many processes that makes them very vulnerable to adulteration at any step in this process.

So, when the manufacturers acquire their materials and, especially when we are talking not about raw materials but about processed materials that are going to be incorporated in the final food product, that is at risk of using adulterated materials for the final product.

My advice is to test the materials that you are using, especially when processed. Ask to your suppliers about traceability of that product. Also test the final products to be sure that you are providing products that are in compliance with the labels. Use the analytic tools that you have available to test your suppliers and to choose the best suppliers, the ones that you can be confident in.