Food Standards Agency — FS515009 Measuring Home-bred Authenticity: Isotopic Ratio Indications for Mo

Descriptions

Following the horse-meat incident, authenticity and provenance of meat has been identified as an issue of significant public concern. Scottish Ministers are keen for Scotland to have a world-class surveillance system that should identify potentially fraudulent activity. ‘Scotch Beef’ is known to attract a market premium and is likely to be a candidate for fraudulent substitution. Deterrence of such fraud is therefore a particular priority for Scotland. The aim of this project is to improve the Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis data available for Scotch beef, to allow blind testing of uncooked beef to establish the authenticity of beef labelled as ‘Scotch’. The benefits this project will provide include the availability of an additional tool for identifying potential food fraud, improve consumer confidence that the product that they are buying is genuine through an increase in brand reputation and improve data held UK wide on geographical indexing of beef. At the end of the project a more complete map of isotopic markers from around Scotland, and potentially the rest of the UK, will be available. This will allow enforcement authorities to blind-test samples of beef to establish if they are from Scotland, England, Wales or Northern Ireland. This will provide a screening test which will act as a useful indicator of potential fraudulent activity and assuring consumer confidence in the products they buy.