University doubles down on food fraud pledge with new think-tank

For years, Michigan State University has been seeking to help educate and boost research into food fraud, and has now launched a new corporate-backed think-tank that aims to focus on the root cause of this criminal activity, as well as helping all stakeholders work together to help fight it.

The think-tank's members are made up of some of the biggest names in the food and retail industry, from Mars and Danone to Hershey's and Cargill.

Back in 2013, Michigan State University (MSU) set up the Food Fraud Initiative (FFI) as a response to what was becoming a growing need: Forming an interdisciplinary research, education, and outreach group for food fraud, run by Dr. John Spink, MSU's director and assistant professor, who has been instrumental in the US in helping define food fraud prevention.

But now it wants to go further, saying that food fraud needs a "spark to transition to a globally harmonized standard operating procedure," as, without a "focused tangible effort," the drive to combat this area may be lost, or at least the implementation "could become fractured."

Hence, its new organisation, the MSU Food Fraud Think Tank (FFTT), which will work out of Dr. Spink's FFI, with its declared mission to: "Leverage Michigan State University's broad leadership position to protect the global and domestic food supply from food fraud vulnerability."

It says: "We are a collaboration point for a wide-range of stakeholders including industry, domestic and international agencies, associations, and other academics. Aligned with the Land Grant mission of MSU, we apply research, education, and outreach from theory to practical application with those stakeholders. The research forms the base for the development of new educational programs, which is applied to evolving outreach engagements."

MSU says that its new think-tank is unique in focusing on the root cause as well as the resource-allocation decision-making needs when it comes to food fraud, which include a broad range of adulteration, misbranding, tampering and overruns or licensee fraud, to theft, diversion, simulation, and counterfeiting.

The decision-making coming out of its research could be for individual companies, entire industries, specific agencies, or even entire governments, it adds.