The Weapons of Analytical Chemistry deployed in the War against Food Fraud

Those that cheat in the global food supply system have many ways that they set out to go undetected in their illegal trade. When one form of testing is applied and detects a fraud quite often the way that the fraud is perpetrated will change and thus avoid detection. This has been the ‘cat & mouse game’ played over quite a number of years and often it is believed that the fraudsters are always several steps ahead.

However analytical chemistry is fighting back and the development and implementation of ‘food fingerprinting’ technologies are proving to be powerful weapons in the fight against criminal activity in our food system. The presentation will give a number of examples of such methods and how such approaches will make it more and more difficult for the fraudsters to get away with cheating us all.

Presenter: Professor Chris Elliott (OBE - Professor of Food Safety and Founder of the Institute for Global Food Security, Queen's University Belfast, UK)

Chris is currently Professor of Food Safety and founder of the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University Belfast. He served as Pro Vice Chancellor responsible for the Medical and Life Sciences Faculty between 2015 and 2018.

He has published more than 450 peer review articles, many of them relating to the detection and control of agriculture, food and environmental related contaminants. His main research interests are in the development of innovative techniques to provide early warning of toxin threats across complex food supply systems. Protecting the integrity of the food supply chain from fraud is also a key research topic and Chris led the independent review of Britain’s food system following the 2013 horsemeat scandal. He currently co-ordinates a flagship Horizon2020 project involving 16 European and 17 Chinese partners on food safety and also co-ordinates a European Institute of Innovation and Technology flagship research project.

Over the years Chris has developed a high level network of collaborators across Europe, the United States , the Middle East and Asia. He is a visiting Professor at the China Agriculture University in Beijing and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a recipient of a Winston Churchill Fellowship and is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Royal Society of Biology. Chris has received numerous prizes and awards for his work. In 2017 he was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry Theophilus Redwood Prize and was also awarded an OBE by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. He was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2020.

Presenter: Sufyan Pandor (LC/MS Field Application Specialist, Agilent Technologies)

Presenter: Sofia Nieto (GC/MS Applications Chemist, Agilent Technologies)