FIGHTING FOOD FRAUD
If we don’t combat food fraud then we will lose the trust of consumers and an avenue of rural regeneration with huge potential will be closed, says Susie Walker-Munro
Consumer trust is fading following an upsurge in food fraud
As consumers become increasingly willing to pay a premium for food that is ethically produced, locally sourced, sustainable, distinctive, and of the highest quality, so the incentives for food fraud grow. In Scotland, this is now a growing but rarely acknowledged problem. Food fraud is not a victimless crime because passing off low-grade, industrially-produced food as if it came from small-scale producers undermines those artisans driving best practise and makes their businesses financially unsustainable.
Scallop diver Guy Grieve wrote recently in these pages about how environmentally ruinous scallop dredgers are passing off their product as hand-dived scallops worthy of a chunky supplement, and duping restaurants into deceiving their customers. That activity is fraudulent and, if left unchecked, could put Scotland’s many hundreds of environmentally sensitive creelers and scallop divers out of business.
When it comes to top-quality Scottish produce, food fraud comes in many shapes and sizes. There is the outright criminality of whisky counterfeiting, for instance. This hit the headlines last year when 55 rare whiskies purportedly worth £635,000 were tested by the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre (SUERC) using radiocarbon dating, and it was found that 21 were either outright fakes or not distilled in the year declared on the label.
But there are also more subtle ways of ripping off the public. Bel Forbes, a high-quality butcher with shops in Edzell and Montrose, supplied one well-known restaurant when they revamped their menu, only to find that after trumpeting her as provenance on both their menu and website, the restaurant replaced her beef with a far cheaper alternative yet refused to remove Bels Butchers’ name from their menu. ‘Another way restaurants mislead customers is by taking my steaks, so that they can list me as their beef producer, but then sourcing
the rest of their meat from far cheaper alternative sources which they don’t list,’ she says.
I am a good example of the problems facing small-scale Scottish producers who focus on quality and sustainability. One of a growing band of Scottish tea producers who supply high-end tea grown in Scotland, we are having to spend a disproportionate amount of time dealing with opportunists who exploit labelling rules to charge top dollar for cheaply-produced tea in what is effectively food fraud.
Just in case you were wondering why anyone would bother duping the public over tea, bear in mind how expensive it is to produce the very finest brew. Our 100% pure Scottish black tea ‘Kinnettles Gold’ sells for £50 for a 20g tin.
But there’s no easy money to be made here because it takes a huge investment of time, energy and cash to get started. The growing season in Scotland is very short and conditions are marginal, so tea growing here is a cottage industry, with 28 small-scale growers, most of whom have a thousand plants or less growing in under a quarter of an acre. Tea plants take four to five years to grow and need careful husbandry, so there are just a few kilos of 100% pure Scottish-grown tea on the market.
The lack of an accepted authentication method for tea is a problem, while the widespread presence of ‘Scottish Breakfast Tea’ (which is imported from India, Kenya or China, but packaged here) further muddies the waters.
Labelling is a minefield in all areas of food production. ‘Scottish smoked salmon’ is imported salmon that has been smoked in Scotland, while ‘smoked Scottish salmon’ is Scottish salmon that has been smoked in Scotland. In the tea world, three times as much tea is sold as coming from Darjeeling as is actually grown there, with producers mixing it in with lesser product to maximise profits.
The same problem occurs with Scottish tea, so that instead of tea labelled as ‘Scottish grown tea’ being 100% Scottish grown tea, it could be a blend of home-grown tea mixed with imported tea. This has created confusion that is being exploited to the detriment of consumers. Chancers claiming to be Scottish tea producers have been selling tea which they market as if it is 100% produced in Scotland, when the vast majority is cheap, imported tea. Food Standards Scotland, the organisation which investigates food fraud, is looking at this specific issue, but such investigations take time and in the meantime prices are being forced downwards and genuine artisan producers are in danger of going bust.
The irony is that we already have the means to provide consumers with the confidence they crave. Dr David Burslem, of the School of Biological Sciences at Aberdeen University, has run a pilot study in collaboration with the Tea Gardens of Scotland collective of growers. Over 100 tea samples from Scotland and around the world were tested using ionomics, a multi-elemental analysis that creates a chemical fingerprint and can differentiate teas grown in different locations based on the elemental profile of the soil. Teas from Angus, Fife and Perthshire were processed alongside 80 teas from around the world, with the test results demonstrating that teas grown in Scotland can be clearly distinguished by their distinct chemical fingerprint.
This is potentially game-changing Scottish technology which could soon be used to prove the provenance of other products in the food and drinks industry. Scotland’s USP is our pristine environment and high standards, virtues for which people at home and abroad are willing to pay. Our food sector, and especially the fast-growing artisan sector, can expand rapidly and support many thousands of jobs, often in remote rural areas, but only if we don’t allow the faith consumers have in us to be abused. If we do that, we risk losing their trust – and their business.
Sensible and ethically-minded consumers will still ask questions, and we must continue to educate them, but food producers can’t expect our customers to do our job for us. What we need now if Scotland’s food sector is to maximise the potential of its burgeoning high-quality, high-price sector is clearer labelling rules, more energetic enforcement, stiff penalties for misleading consumers, and a collective refusal to let the bad apples spoil it for everyone.