U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention Publishes Proposed Guidance on Food Fraud Vulnerability Assessment

FAIRFIELD, N.J. - Jan. 12, 2015 - PRLog -- This is a framework document that allows a company to assess the vulnerabilities of the food ingredient and to develop systems to help prevent food fraud.

USP Food Fraud Database

In 2012 USP launch their Food Fraud Database designed to list food fraud adulterants and provide understanding of what are the key issues for specific food ingredients. With this database and the USP involvement for food ingredient with their Food Chemical Codex (FCC) group, USP developed this guidance, once finalized, to be part of an appendix in the third supplement of the FCC 9 edition.

Guidance on Food Fraud Vulnerability Assessment

The guidance is structured in three major steps of which the first two steps are designed to characterize the vulnerabilities of a food ingredient and the last step is designed to develop mitigation strategies. Step 1 is the assessment of the contributing factors such as supply chain, audit strategy, supplier relationship, history of supplier quality and safety issues, susceptibility of quality assurance methods and specifications, testing frequency, fraud history, geopolitical considerations and economic anomalies. Step 2 is the assessment of potential impacts such as food safety and economics. The final step 3 is the development of a mitigation strategy.

Throughout this guidance actual situations from history are used to illustrate the specific food fraud issue.

The public can comment on this document starting 31 December 2014 at the FCC Forum (http://www.usp.org/food-ingredients/fcc-forum) of which periods last for 90 days so will end March 31, 2015.

Reference:

* Food Fraud Mitigation (http://www.usp.org/sites/default/files/usp_pdf/EN/fcc/Not...)

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