A course on food fraud prevention has been organised to assist New Zealand exporters following 12 people being accused of making and selling fake branded baby milk powder in China. The full day Intentional Adulteration course is being run alongside the 2017 Food Integrity Conference, to help food producers develop strategies to guard against acts intended to cause wide-scale harm to consumers and ruin brand reputation. In this latest incident, it is claimed that the accused repackaged inferior milk powder as premium infant formula brands. Such international food adulteration, or fraud, has the potential to disrupt food supply and cause illness or even death. This sort of food safety issue could have detrimental impact on NZ food brands and their reputation.
“New Zealand’s export producers face an increasingly complex food chain,” said Food Integrity director and Food Integrity 2017 conference organiser, Dr Helen Darling. “They are judged on the quality of their food once it reaches the consumer, even though they don’t have total control over the supply chain. The global experience and insight of speakers at Food Integrity 2017 and the Intentional Adulteration course will assist NZ food exporters to understand the risk and develop strategies to mitigate it.”
