Free range? Or food fraud? The new tech exposing ‘bogus’ Australian food labels

Can we trust food labels? As in, is the chicken in the supermarket fridge really free-range like it says it is? Are the "local" prawns from a fishmonger at the market really Australian?

Today, science reporter Angus Dalton talks about new technology developed by Australian scientists that can uncover where food truly comes from, and the results may well lead you to question what you’re buying on your weekly shop.

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Tammy Mills, filling in
for Samantha Salinger. Morris. It's Tuesday, October 7th. Can we
trust food labels? As in is the chicken in the
supermarket fridge really free range like it says it is?

(00:22):
And how about those Australian tiger prawns? Are they really local? Today,
science reporter Angus Dalton talks about a new bit of
technology developed by Australian scientists that can uncover where food
truly comes from. And let's just say the results are, well,
interesting and may well lead you to question what you're
buying on your weekly shop. So, Angus, can you start

(00:49):
by telling us about the problem of food fraud and
what exactly it is?

S2 (00:54):
Yeah. So food fraud is a major issue. The Food
and Drug Administration in the US recently estimated that it
could be costing the global economy about $40 billion a year,
and between two of two and 3 billion of that
could be affecting Australia alone. Um, so it's basically whenever
a food product is sold as something or marketed as

(01:14):
something that it's actually not. So, um, it might have
had something extra added to it, or it could be, uh,
a product that is marketed as an expensive version of
a food product, but it's actually a cheaper version. So
an example of that is, you know, cheaper truffles masquerading
as expensive black truffles. Um, there was also the horsemeat

(01:37):
scandal in Europe, uh, a few years back. DNA testing
revealed that there was horsemeat in about a third of
beef burgers that researchers analyzed in one study. And, uh,
listeners might be able to remember back to the sort
of honey scandal where honey was revealed to be one

(01:58):
of the most adulterated types of food in the world
with the addition of, you know, things like sugar syrup
to make it cheaper, which is a massive issue worldwide.
And we know that in the seafood industry, food fraud
is a particularly big issue. There was a 2023 DNA
analysis in Australia that found 1 in 10 of our
seafood products were mislabeled. So examples of that included things

(02:23):
like endangered shark species, including smooth hammerheads and school shark,
were being battered and sold as fish and chip shop flake.
And in another example, there was a Tasmanian supermarket that
was selling fillets of imported ray. Uh, and the DNA
analysis actually revealed that that was an endangered species of
spotback skate from South Australia, where that species is actually

(02:46):
at risk of extinction. So there's a long and hazy
supply chain in the seafood industry, where imported seafood passes
through many hands, often before it reaches our fishmongers, which
increases the risk of this food fraud. And between 60
and 70% of seafood in Australia is imported. So it
is a big issue here.

S1 (03:06):
And this was a topic that piqued the interest of
an Australian scientist who started investigating this issue. Right.

S2 (03:12):
That's right. So Doctor Debashish Mazumder, who is the leader
of food provenance research at the Australian Nuclear Science and
Technology Organisation, or Ansto, in Lucas Heights, near Sydney, about
almost a decade ago purchased some supermarket chicken to feed
fish for an experiment he was running. And the two

(03:33):
types of chicken he bought were free range and the
other was corn fed. And he analyzed those samples and
they were suspiciously similar. So basically all animals and plants
have specific elemental makeups depending on where they live and
what they eat. So these two different chickens that were

(03:54):
raised in different circumstances and fed different things should have
had very different elemental makeups. But his analysis showed that
they were very similar, which kind of alarmed him. He
thought that, you know, this chicken isn't actually corn fed chicken.
And that's sort of what twigged him onto this issue.
And he wondered, how big is this problem? How many

(04:15):
of our food products are claiming to be something that
they're not? And that's sort of what set him on
this journey of looking more closely at this issue of
food fraud.

S1 (04:25):
So he started to look into tracing the origin of
certain food. Right. So can you just explain, like how
do you actually do this? How do you trace, you know,
a bit of fish back to its real origin.

S2 (04:37):
So you can do this thing called X-ray fluorescence scanning
or XRF scanning, um, where it reveals in very, very
good detail the elemental signature or the elemental fingerprint of
the cells within a creature's tissue. And by doing that,
you can you can sort of trace back where it

(04:58):
came from, if you know what the elemental makeup of
a fish in a particular river or a particular part
of the ocean or a particular fish farm is. So
some of the simple examples that the researchers at Ansto
gave me was that you could imagine a fish species
swimming off the coast of the Northern Territory, and there
might be infinitesimally small traces of uranium in that fish

(05:21):
just because of the territory's history of uranium mining. Or perhaps,
you know, you might expect a fish swimming sort of
near Wollongong to have more traces of copper because of
the history of copper mining there. So that's one of
the examples. But also, you know, it doesn't necessarily have
to be something related to mining or anything. It's just
based on what the food is available in a particular

(05:44):
environment in a particular river or stretch of ocean. Um,
and sort of just the, just the makeup of the
elements that a particular fish in a particular location is
incorporating into its body.

S1 (05:56):
And so what Doctor Mazumdar has done is he's created
a new type of technology around this scanning. Right. What
is that?

S2 (06:04):
Yeah. So you can do this. Scanning. I saw the
big machine that can do it down at an Sto.
And it's it's the size of, like, a big coffin, essentially.
It's huge. Um, so you can do it with that.
But what his team have been working on is a
handheld scanner that almost looks like a police radar gun
to be able to do this sort of on the fly,
I guess. Um, and this scanner traditionally was used as

(06:28):
a sediment scanner. So looking at, you know, for use
in mining, for looking at, you know, soil samples and
stuff like that, but they have actually repurposed it for
use on biological samples, which means that they can trace food.

S1 (06:41):
So the scanner, as you said, he can scan on
his team, can scan like a piece of fish, for example.
And it's picking up you said elements. So that means
like what? Copper or iron or like the classic periodic
table elements, right?

S2 (06:55):
Yep. You're right. And I can give you an example
because when I was there at the lab, they did
a demonstration and they had two almost identical looking bream. Um,
one was from the Clarence River in Yamba, and one
was from the Hunter River near Newcastle. And if you
look at these fish, they look almost identical. As I said,
DNA analysis would tell you that they're the exact same

(07:15):
species of fish. But this handheld scanner can go deeper.
They analyzed little chunks of flesh from these fish while
we were there, and within minutes they revealed that the
fish had different levels of calcium, phosphorus and chlorine. Plus,
the Yamba bream had tiny signatures of the rare earth

(07:38):
element neodymium, while the Newcastle fish had none. So these
two very similar looking fish, not too far away from
each other, had very different elemental fingerprints. And now the
Ansto team have that data. They can test other samples
and trace them back to either the Clarence River or
the Hunter.

S1 (07:58):
We'll be right back. And so what else has the
early trials of this technology found?

S2 (08:05):
Yeah. So, um, they've been playing around with it. And
one of the examples was they tested black tiger prawns
for sale at Christmas that were being sold in Sydney
and marketed as Australian caught prawns. Those prawns were actually
from Malaysia and they've also used it to scrutinise, uh
product Kakadu plum products for sale online. So this is

(08:27):
a very significant, um, product produced by a lot of
indigenous owned businesses in places like the Northern Territory. It's
a very sought after fruit because it's very high in
vitamin C. Um, it's valued for its medicinal purposes. So
it's a great source of income from a lot of, uh,
First Nations businesses in Australia. But what can happen is

(08:49):
that people in places like China can get the seeds
and grow it there and sell it as like an
Australian grown product, but it was actually grown in China.
Or even worse, uh, there can be Kakadu plum products
that have no Kakadu plum in it at all. One
example was that there was Kakadu plum powder for sale online,
and when the team scanned it, they actually revealed that

(09:11):
it was cornflower. So there was no real Kakadu plum
in there whatsoever. So not only is that ripping off customers,
it's also undercutting these indigenous owned businesses in Australia.

S1 (09:22):
So in terms of being able to trace the food
of origin, they'd need samples to compare it to. Right.

S2 (09:27):
Yeah. You're right. So over the last sort of 8
or 9 years, these ansto scientists have been building a
database of different locations across Australia and now South East Asia.
So they get prawn and fish and oyster samples from
all up and down the east coast of Australia. They've
got wild caught tuna, they've got farmed fish, they've got

(09:50):
farmed prawns, they've got wild prawns and all of these
different rivers and oceans. And now they're collaborating with other
research institutions in South East Asia who go out prawning
and they do their own tests of those prawns, and
sometimes they send a sample to an oyster as well.
So Ansto can do their own test as well. And
that's building a really big now global database of where

(10:12):
different food products come from. So they can take a
sample of a fish that's for sale and trace it
back to more and more areas in places like Malaysia, Vietnam,
the Northern Territory, Queensland, New South Wales. So building that
database is really important. And actually what makes this story
a little bit newsworthy is they're actually taking the technology

(10:33):
this week to the World Expo in Osaka, which is
where countries showcase their latest technological innovations. And that's really
important because the more global collaborators they have, the more
people and institutions they have testing the fish in their
local area, their local cities, the better this technology will become.
Because the database and the global food map, if you like,

(10:53):
will become more robust.

S1 (10:55):
And so what happens from here? Like what measures can
be put into place to crack down on this kind
of mislabeling? Can we all just have a device like
Doctor Mazumdar's team have developed?

S2 (11:07):
Yeah, I mean, that would be the hope that it
could be sort of used in fish markets and maybe
even supermarkets, to check claims that are to check claims
on the label of food products, essentially. And the answer
team also said that it's quite a good deterrent because
like I said earlier, you know, sometimes fishmongers are getting
a product and there's actually no easy way to check

(11:28):
where it might be from unless you do something like
DNA analysis, which takes a really long time. So having
a handheld product sort of out in these spaces could
check that really quickly. It's got at the moment about
an 80% accuracy, but if that device flags any issues,
they can then take that fish back to the lab
and scan it in more detail. If they want to
investigate a certain food product more deeply. So they're hoping

(11:51):
that it's really a deterrent for people who may be
selling products knowingly. And there's also new seafood labelling laws
coming in in June next year, partly as a response
to this issue of sort of rife mislabelling in the
seafood Fruit industry. So from June, hospitality venues including cafes

(12:13):
and restaurants, will actually have to tell customers where a
certain fish or seafood product came from, whether it's from Australia,
whether it's imported and whether it's a mix of the two.
So this device actually presents a really good way to
enforce that, right? Because, you know, you could just slap
an an Australian sort of label on something. And there's
no quick way of checking whether that's actually the case.

(12:35):
So this device could one day actually present a really
easy way to check the veracity of claims like that.

S1 (12:42):
Mhm. And so how do people protect themselves when they're
walking around the supermarket and they know considering buying say
free range chicken. And you're questioning whether it is actually
free range at all. And the same thing goes with
seafood where you're presuming what the label says is actually accurate.
Like what do we do to ensure that we're buying food?
That really is what it says it is.

S2 (13:02):
Yeah. I mean, if a product claim that it's organic
or free range, you can look at the independent certification
of those products to make sure it's not just marketing spin.
If you're at a restaurant, you can ask where a
particular piece of fish is from, which isn't always clear,
and it won't be sort of required until these new
laws come into effect in June. But simply asking the
question might just give you a little bit more information

(13:22):
about that product. You can also look on the Australian
Competition and Consumer Commission's website, because they make rulings, sometimes
against producers who have made misleading claims about food that
ostensibly free range or organic. So that's worth checking too.
But to be honest, Tammy, you know, I've been thinking
about food fraud and this device, and I was saying
to the team, I was like, wow, once you really

(13:42):
get this off the ground, and if you just did
maybe one pass through a supermarket or a fishmonger, you
could really imagine that there would be quite a lot
of food fraud out there. There's just not an easy
way to to check this at the moment. And you
could imagine that investigations with this device would very quickly
uncover that a lot of the claims being made on

(14:05):
certain food products are, in fact, bogus. So it'd be
really interesting to see how and when this technology gets
applied in the field.

S1 (14:17):
Well thank you, Angus, so much for your time.

S2 (14:20):
Thanks for having me, Tammy.

S1 (14:28):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Josh towers.
Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. To listen to
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(14:52):
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I'm Tammy Mills and this is the morning edition. Thanks
for listening.