The Monetary Value Of Meat Authenticity And Food Safety In Ready To Heat Lasagne: Implications Of The ‘Horse Meat Scandal’ Across Europe

The recent ‘horse meat scandal’ in Europe has sparked huge concerns among consumers, as horse meat was found in beef lasagne ready to be consumed. Within STARTEC, a European funded project, this study investigates consumers’ preferences, attitudes and willingness to pay (WTP) towards characteristics of ready to heat (RTH) fresh lasagne, including origin of the meat, tested for meat authenticity, safety of the lasagne, and nutritional value, using Discrete Choice Experiments in six countries - Republic of Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Norway. Our representative sample of 4,598 European consumers makes this the largest cross country study of this kind. The questionnaire was administered online in January 2014. Results from models in WTP-space show that, on average, consumers are willing to pay considerable amount (about €4-9) for food authenticity; on this Irish and Italian are the least concerned while Spanish are the most concerned. As expected from discussing with stakeholders, food safety claims and nutritional value of the RTH lasagne are relatively less important. Consumers also value knowing the origin of ingredients preferring locally sourced meat. Primarily, the results of this study present strong evidence that consumers in Europe are highly concerned about authenticity of the meat in ready meals and strongly prefer to know that the meat is national. This evidence suggests that there is great value in providing information on these attributes, both from a consumer perspective and where this leads to an increased consumer confidence has benefits for the food industry.

Food fraud and consumers' choices in the wake of the horsemeat scandal

Purpose – In 2012, the European food industry was hit by a food fraud: horsemeat was found in
pre-prepared foods, without any declaration on the package. This is commonly referred to as the
“horsemeat scandal”. The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumers’ preferences across
Europe for a selected ready meal, ready to heat (RTH) fresh lasagne, to consider whether the effects of
potential food frauds on consumers’ choices can be mitigated by introducing enhanced standards of
RTH products.
Design/methodology/approach – An online survey was administered to 4,598 consumers of RTH
lasagne in six European countries (Republic of Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Norway),
applying discrete choice experiments to estimate consumers’ willingness to pay for enhanced food
safety standards and highlight differences between countries.
Findings – Many similarities across countries emerged, as well as some differences. Consumers in
Europe are highly concerned with the authenticity of the meat in ready meals and strongly prefer to
know that ingredients are nationally sourced. Strong regional differences in price premiums exist for
enhanced food safety standards.
Originality/value – This research adds relevant insights in the analysis of consumers’ reaction to
food fraud, providing practical guidelines on the most appropriate practices that producers should
adopt and on the information to reduce food risk perception among consumers. This would prove
beneficial for the food processing industry and the European Union. The survey is based on a
representative sample of European consumers making this the largest cross-country study of this kind.

Mrs. Lincoln Goes Shopping

Analysis of the Old Clothes Scandal of 1867, and Mrs. Lincoln's "shopping mania."

'Mining money': science, legal technologies & working the borderlands of global finance

This paper explores the roles of science and market devices in the commodification of ‘nature’ and the configuration of flows of speculative capital. It focuses on mineral prospecting and the market for shares in ‘junior’ mining companies. In recent years these companies have expanded the reach of their exploration activities overseas, taking advantage of innovations in exploration methodologies and the liberalisation of fiscal and property regimes in ‘emerging’ mineral rich developing countries. Recent literature has explored how the reconfiguration of notions of ‘risk’ has structured the uneven distribution of rents. It is increasingly evident that neoliberal framing of environmental, political, social and economic risks has set in motion overflows that multinational mining capital had not bargained for (e.g. nationalisation, violence and political resistance). However, the role of ‘geological risk’ in animating flows of mining finance is often assumed as a ‘technical’ given. Yet geological knowledge claims, translated locally, designed to travel globally, assemble heterogeneous elements within distanciated regimes of metrology, valuation and commodity production. This paper explores how knowledge of nature is enrolled within systems of property relations, focusing on the genealogy of the knowledge practices that animate contemporary circuits of speculative mining finance. It argues that the financing of mineral prospecting mobilises pragmatic and situated forms of knowledge rather than actuarially driven calculations that promise predictability. A Canadian public enquiry struck in the wake of scandal associated with Bre-X’s prospecting activities in Indonesia is used to glean insights into the ways in which the construction of a system of public warrant to underpin financial speculation is predicated upon particular subjectivities and the outworking of everyday practices and struggles over ‘value’. Reflection on practical investments in processes of standardisation, rituals of verification and systems of accreditation reveal much about how the materiality of things shape the ways in which regional and global financial circuits are integrated, selectively transforming existing social relations and forms of knowledge production.

The application of Near-Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS) to detect melamine adulteration of soya bean meal

Soya bean products are used widely in the animal feed industry as a protein based feed ingredient and
have been found to be adulterated with melamine. This was highlighted in the Chinese scandal of
2008. Dehulled soya (GM and non-GM), soya hulls and toasted soya were contaminated with melamine
and spectra were generated using Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS). By applying chemometrics
to the spectral data, excellent calibration models and prediction statistics were obtained. The coefficients
of determination (R2) were found to be 0.89–0.99 depending on the mathematical algorithm used,
the data pre-processing applied and the sample type used. The corresponding values for the root mean
square error of calibration and prediction were found to be 0.081–0.276% and 0.134–0.368%, respectively,
again depending on the chemometric treatment applied to the data and sample type. In addition, adopting
a qualitative approach with the spectral data and applying PCA, it was possible to discriminate
between the four samples types and also, by generation of Cooman’s plots, possible to distinguish
between adulterated and non-adulterated samples.

A new analytical approach for the detection of palm oil in vegetable oil blends

The new Food Information Regulation (1169/2011), dictates that in a refined vegetable oil blend, the type of oil must be clearly identified in the package in contract with current practice where is labelled under the generic and often misleading term “vegetable oil”. With increase consumer awareness in food authenticity, as shown in the recent food scandal with horsemeat in beef products, the identification of the origin of species in food products becomes increasingly relevant. Palm oil is used extensively in food manufacturing and as global demand increases, producing countries suffer from the aftermath of intensive agriculture. Even if only a small portion of global production, sustainable palm oil comes in great demand from consumers and industry. It is therefore of interest to detect the presence of palm oil in food products as consumers have the right to know if it is present in the product or not, mainly from an ethical point of view. Apart from palm oil and its derivatives, rapeseed oil and sunflower oil are also included. With DNA-based methods, the gold standard for the detection of food authenticity and species recognition deemed not suitable in this analytical problem, the focus is inevitably drawn to the chromatographic and spectroscopic methods. Both chromatographic (such as GC-FID and LC-MS) and spectroscopic methods (FT-IR, Raman, NIR) are relevant. Previous attempts have not shown promising results due to oils’ natural variation in composition and complex chemical signals but the suggested two-step analytical procedure is a promising approach with very good initial results.

Mining Money: the generative capacities of scientific and legal knowledge practices in the making of resource economies

In 1997 a scandal associated with Bre-X, a junior mining firm, and its prospecting activities in Indonesia, exposed to public scrutiny the ways in which mineral exploration firms acquire, assess and report on scientific claims about the natural environment. At stake here was not just how investors understood the provisional nature of scientific knowledge, but also evidence of fraud. Contemporaneous mining scandals not only included the salting of cores, but also unreliable proprietary sample preparation and assay methods, mis-representations of visual field estimates as drilling results and ‘overly optimistic’ geological reports. This paper reports on initiatives taken in the wake of these scandals and prompted by the Mining Standards Task Force (TSE/OSC 1999). For regulators, mandated to increase investor confidence in Canada’s leading role within the global mining industry, efforts focused first and foremost upon identifying and removing sources of error and wilfulness within the production and circulation of scientific knowledge claims. A common goal cross-cutting these initiatives was ‘a faithful representation of nature’ (Daston and Galison 2010), however, as the paper argues, this was manifest in an assemblage of practices governed by distinct and rival regulative visions of science and the making of markets in claims about ‘nature’. These ‘practices of fidelity’, it is argued, can be consequential in shaping the spatial and temporal dynamics of the marketization of nature.

The current and potential applications of Ambient Mass Spectrometry in detecting food fraud

The adulteration of food has received substantial amounts of media attention in the last few years, with events such as the European horsemeat scandal in 2013 sending shockwaves through society. Almost all cases are motivated by the pursuit of profits and are often aided by long and complex supply chains. In the past few years, the rapid growth of ambient mass spectrometry (AMS) has been remarkable, with over thirty different ambient ionisation techniques available. Due to the increasing concerns of the food industry and regulators worldwide, AMS is now being utilised to investigate whether or not it can generate results which are faster yet comparable to those of conventional techniques. This article reviews some aspects of the adulteration of food and its impact on the economy and the public's health, the background to ambient mass spectrometry and the studies that have been undertaken to detect food adulteration using this technology.