Background

The authenticity of foodstuffs and associated fraud has become an important area. It is estimated that global food fraud costs approximately $US49b annually. In relation to testing for this malpractice, analytical technologies exist to detect fraud but are usually expensive and lab based. However, recently there has been a move towards non-targeted methods as means for detecting food fraud but the question arises if these techniques will ever be accepted as routine.

Scope and approach

In this opinion paper, many aspects relating to the role of non-targeted spectroscopy based methods for food fraud detection are considered: (i) a review of the current non-targeted spectroscopic methods to include the general differences with targeted techniques; (ii) overview of in-house validation procedures including samples, data processing and chemometric techniques with a view to recommending a harmonized procedure; (iii) quality assessments including QC samples, ring trials and reference materials; (iv) use of “big data” including recording, validation, sharing and joint usage of databases.

Key findings and conclusions

In order to keep pace with those who perpetrate food fraud there is clearly a need for robust and reliable non-targeted methods that are available to many stakeholders. Key challenges faced by the research and routine testing communities include: a lack of guidelines and legislation governing both the development and validation of non-targeted methodologies, no common definition of terms, difficulty in obtaining authentic samples with full traceability for model building; the lack of a single chemometric modelling software that offers all the algorithms required by developers.

中文翻译：

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从针对食品欺诈测试的针对性方法转变为非针对性方法有哪些科学挑战？如何应对这些挑战？–光谱学案例研究

背景

食品的真实性和相关的欺诈行为已成为重要领域。据估计，全球食品欺诈每年的成本约为490亿美元。关于针对这种渎职行为的测试，存在分析技术来检测欺诈行为，但分析技术通常很昂贵并且是基于实验室的。但是，近来，人们已经朝着非针对性的方法来检测食品欺诈的方法进行了研究，但是问题是，这些技术是否会被常规接受。

范围和方法

在本意见书中，考虑了许多与基于非目标光谱学的方法在食品欺诈检测中的作用有关的方面：（i）审查当前的非目标光谱学方法，以涵盖目标技术的一般差异；（ii）概述内部验证程序，包括样品，数据处理和化学计量技术，以期提出统一程序；（iii）质量评估，包括QC样品，环试验和参考材料；（iv）使用“大数据”，包括记录，验证，共享和联合使用数据库。

主要发现和结论

为了与那些实施食品欺诈的人保持同步，显然需要许多利益相关者都可以使用的稳健而可靠的非针对性方法。研究和常规测试界面临的主要挑战包括：缺乏指导和控制非目标方法的指南和法律，没有通用的术语定义，难以获得具有完全可追溯性的真实样品用于模型构建；缺少提供开发人员所需的所有算法的单一化学计量学建模软件。