The wholesale price of vanilla pods has escalated nearly 500% over the past four and a half years, due to severe weather conditions affecting quality and availability – making vanilla the second-most expensive spice after saffron, and worth more per kilogram than silver.
An international operation coordinated by Europol has resulted in the dismantling of an large organised criminal network behind the fraudulent sale of huge quantities of counterfeit extra virgin olive oil in Germany and Italy.
Missing beehives, hijacked food trucks and notorious perlemoen smugglers, these are few of the infamous South African food heists to know about, worth millions of rands.
Four men have been found guilty of falsely labeling horsemeat as beef. The convictions stem from a Europe-wide scandal in 2013 in which the meat was used in frozen lasagna and other industrial food products.
Here's tale of cops uncovering some high-level food-bev fraud underway in SA....
Renowned for its cuisine and with discerning consumers who put priority on food provenance, a high-profile food fraud scandal is unfolding in Japan. It has engulfed some of the country's most prestigious hotels and department stores and threatens to undermine the international reputation...
And we thought they just liked it this way? Two California residents are suing Anheuser-Busch, alleging that the company waters down Budweiser and other beers "significantly" to boost profits, their attorneys announced Tuesday....
An unlikely headline hogger, but news that horse DNA has been found in burgers sold by four major supermarket chains operating in Britain – Aldi, Iceland, Lidl and Tesco – and sold in the UK and Ireland, has drawn massive media coverage.
Can you trust the labels on processed meats – mince, sausages, deli meats and burgers? If a study conducted by Dr Donna Cawthorn, a food scientist with the University of Stellenbosch, is anything to go by, you can’t, reports IOL consumer columnist, Wendy Knowler....
Such is the level of non-compliance with legally-correct labelling of "Individually Quick Frozen (IQF)" chicken products sold across the country, the Dept of Health has found it necessary to issue a statement warning consumers that they are being duped in many instances, and that it...
History has taught us that wherever there is a large price difference between two similar products and no objective means of checking is available, fraud can and does take place. Fish fraud – labeling a less-desirable species as a more desirable one –...
Food fraud is big business, and it has been in the news headlines in SA when it comes to fish substitution, and more recently in late 2011 with the Orion meat saga in Cape Town where the company incurred the outrage...
Olive oil fraud is a problem the world over, including South Africa. A new book, Extra Virginity: the Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, the author, Tom Mueller, an American who lives in Italy, lays bare the workings of an industry that...
The pervasiveness of food fraud is almost infinite – and needs a continuing public-private partnership approach to tackle it, according to a new paper published in the Journal of Food Science, published by the Institute of Food Technologists. It is a food protection...