Featured Article: Food Labelling

In 2013, the global food industry was hit hard by the horse meat scandal where products labelled beef contained horse meat and consumers were not aware of this fiasco. A Dutch meat wholesaler was later convicted of having sold over 300 tons of horse meat, labelled as beef, to over 500 companies.

Further to this, the milk scandal of 2008 had brought concerns over food fraud to the forefront in China. Chinese officials estimated that as many as six (6) babies died, and nearly 300,000 infants were sickened by dairy products contaminated with melamine, which had been added to watered-down milk in order to fool protein content tests. This is according to a report labelled ‘‘China’s Food Industry in Crisis: A Detailed Analysis of the FSL and China’s Enforcement Obstacles’’.