The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) continues to tackle food fraud so consumers can be confident the food they buy is safe and accurately represented and businesses can compete fairly in the market. The agency is pleased to share the latest food sampling results in its Food Fraud Annual Report. This year the CFIA tested the authenticity of 6 foods that are commonly misrepresented. Overall, the testing showed a compliance rate of 92.7% for fish, 77.5% for honey, 99.1% for meat, 86.9% for olive oil, 64.3% for other expensive oils, and 90.8% for spices.
Meat is a new addition to the report this year and had a high rate of compliance. The findings for the rest of the commodities are consistent with last year's report, showing that the CFIA's efforts to protect consumers and the food industry from food fraud continue to be effective. This annual testing not only helps the agency address existing risks, it is also used to plan future sampling and inspection strategies to better target areas of high risk.
When potential food fraud was discovered, the CFIA took action, preventing more than 100,000 kg of misrepresented food from being sold in Canada. These actions include destroying, relabelling or removing products from Canada.
Everyone has a role to play in combatting food fraud. Industry is responsible for properly representing and labelling its food products and providing consumers with information that is neither false nor misleading. Anyone who suspects that a food product is not accurately represented can report it to the CFIA.
Source : Canada.ca