Counterfeits in the Swiss grocery market

Chimia: Swiss food counterfeit

Evgeny Smirnov, Geektimes

For many, Switzerland is the standard of quality, which largely dictates its standards to the whole world. What is only one Nestle worth, whose products, most likely, you even have at home!

Surprisingly, people also live in Switzerland. Some of them are engaged in "business" and want to reduce costs in all legal and not very ways in order to maximize profits. Of course, as consumers, to put it mildly, it is unpleasant for us when cost reduction comes at our expense. Especially when it concerns such a sensitive area as the food industry.

The May issue of the journal of the Swiss Chemical Society (Swiss Chemical Society) Chimia was completely devoted to publications devoted to the problem of food counterfeiting and the fight against it.

My attention was attracted by one article (Food Adulteration in Switzerland: From ‘Ravioli’ over ‘Springbok’ to ‘Disco Sushi’), in which Phillip Hubner, an active expert in the field of food quality, tells some remarkable and instructive stories about the facts of the detection of food counterfeit and the fight against it. For obvious reasons, the stories of ten years ago are given, but they can also tell a lot of interesting things.

The first story: let's plunge into the historical perspective

The Swiss national food security strategy assumes that "if we can grow and produce something for domestic consumption, then we are obliged to grow, produce and consume it, even if it is cheaper to buy and bring it." Therefore, food and security in this country are taken extremely seriously.

For example, in neighboring Germany in 1910, a thin brochure authored by Adolf Reitz (Adolf Reitz) "Food products and the art of forgery" ("Nahrungsmittel und Fälscherkünste") was published. In the preface to it, the author writes that "everyone has the right to receive from the seller what he asks for and what he pays for, even if the buyer usually does not have the opportunity to check the purchased items." Great opening speech!

And although analytical methods have made great strides over the past century, one is amazed at how accurately the alcohol content, acidity and some other parameters of products were measured, which made it possible to determine the origin of goods, for example, wine. Today, counterfeit wine is easily detected by its isotopic composition.

The second story: alcohol from a canister under the guise of a brand

To be honest, it was this story that made me read the text of the article. It seems like we all go to bars and restaurants, drink beer, wine, cocktail, and, it seems, alcohol is poured from the right bottles, but for some reason the head hurts in the morning.

Once in 2003, in the canton of St. Galen, a former employee of the institution "knocked" (which, by the way, is not such a rare act) and tipped off the authorities to one big disco and bar.

In the face of the inspection that arrived at the scene, the usual picture appeared: open bottles with dispensers peacefully coexisted on the shelves with their corked counterparts. Everything gave the impression of elitism. Samples were taken from both bottles of Bacardi white rum and some other types of alcohol.

The primary analysis did not show significant differences between one drink and another (slightly underestimated indicators can be explained by the gradual weathering of the components), with the exception of ethyl acetate, which turned out to be almost 10 times less!

The brilliant idea did not come immediately and it consisted in checking not the perfumes themselves, but the content of ions in water such as chlorides, nitrates and sulfates. After all, if alcohol is produced on the spot under the bar, then its ionic composition should differ significantly from the water used in the production of this or that original alcohol.

It turned out that the "restaurateur" bought quite legally a fragrance that fully corresponds to the bouquet of Bacardi rum, Jack Daniels whiskey and some other drinks in Austria (literally move across the border). And the "cocktails" themselves were prepared in strict accordance with the recipe of the fragrance manufacturer in the bar itself. One or two bottles were regularly refilled from cans under the bar, while a corked bottle created an "image".

"Image" on the left and image on the right
The third story: tuna with rhodamine sauce (dye)

Another story given in the article is related to eating tuna, including for making sushi.

Fresh tuna meat has a characteristic red color, which eventually turns into an unsightly brown. Manufacturers often treat meat with carbon monoxide, preventing the irreversible oxidation of Fe2+ to Fe3+. However, such processing is prohibited in many countries (for example, in Switzerland), as it does not allow to determine the freshness of meat, and as a result, it can cause poisoning due to the accumulation of histamine.

According to statistics, in 2005, more than 20% of tuna meat was wrapped at the Swiss border precisely after CO processing tests.

In January 2006, veterinary control in Zurich and Geneva sent samples of suspiciously red tuna for examination. What was the surprise of the researchers when they brought the sample under a UV lamp. The meat shone like a Christmas toy. Tuna fillets were simply dyed with a dye - rhodamine B and S, while the concentration of CO was zero. Apparently, someone was washing the meat too hard on the Phillipines.

Since then, any batch of tuna is checked at the border with a UV lamp, and then the samples are taken for examination.

The fourth story: chicken – the wounded honor of Switzerland

Meat and meat products are the Achilles heel of the Confederation. And if beef and pork are not so susceptible to "forgery", then chicken is a tasty morsel for unscrupulous producers. Standards in Switzerland are as high as salaries (yes, and even farmers' salaries), so in neighboring Germany, chicken costs almost several times cheaper than that produced on the territory of a small but proud mountainous country. And due to the fact that the domestic market for food products from the EU is actually closed, it turns out that you have to eat only "domestic". Of course, no one forbids going to neighboring Germany or France, buying and returning back, but you can run into a border inspection and get a large fine or even earn a prison sentence. This happened recently in the canton of Zurich, when a Turk was caught at the border with more than 700 kg of meat, which was planned to be sold in the city itself.

Ten years earlier, the veterinary service accidentally decided to check the records of one (sic!) chicken meat manufacturing companies in Switzerland. It turned out that at the end of 2004, more than a ton of chicken meat was imported into the country, 240 kg was processed and sold as expected, 720 kg was packaged, labeled “made in Switzerland” and almost ready for shipment during the New Year holidays. Another 140 kg just disappeared somewhere. A large-scale inspection revealed that more than 300 tons of chicken were illegally imported into the country in the period from 2001 to 2004.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  07.07.2016