Alchemy Systems and the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) recently announced a partnership enabling food companies of all sizes to more easily assess supply chain risk and build robust systems to mitigate food fraud. Food adulteration—food fraud—costs the industry billions of dollars every year and has been connected to hundreds of illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths. ^*

USP’s Food Fraud Database is the most comprehensive source of information on food fraud risk for literally thousands of ingredients. Alchemy, the world’s leading provider of customized food fraud prevention services including FSMA-aligned raw materials screening, food fraud assessment and mitigation, and food fraud prevention sustainment, has recommended that clients consult USP’s database from early on in the food fraud phenomenon. The two organizations announced their formal collaboration at the 2017 Global Food Safety Conference in Houston. The new partnership will make the Food Fraud Database available to food companies with preferred pricing through Alchemy.

“Food companies have struggled to keep up with food adulteration risks inherent in an increasingly global ingredient supply,” said Jeff Eastman, Alchemy’s CEO. “We are delighted to combine Alchemy’s Food Fraud Risk Assessment and Mitigation services with USP’s Food Fraud Database and food fraud expertise so that companies can better protect their supply chains, meet regulations, and safeguard their brands.”

USP’s Food Fraud Database can be used to identify ingredients known to have a history of adulteration, making use of incident reports, inference reports, surveillance records, and analytical methods. USP searches, compiles, and performs quality control checks on data gathered daily from scientific literature, media publications, regulatory and judicial records and trade associations from around the globe. USP’s Food Fraud Mitigation Guidance provides a framework to assess ingredient vulnerability, the associated risk, and develop food fraud mitigation plans.

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The Alchemy-USP collaboration has met with enthusiasm from food quality and safety professionals. “Protecting against food fraud is a major concern for companies dealing with global ingredient suppliers,” says Wendy White, director of global food safety and quality at Golden State Foods—one of the largest diversified suppliers to the quick service restaurant industry. “Alchemy and USP’s new collaboration enables food companies to develop and execute sustainable food fraud prevention programs.”

To learn more about Alchemy, USP, or the Food Fraud Database, please contact Jeff Chilton, Alchemy’s VP of Professional Services, at jeff.chilton@alchemysystems.com, or Bill Folkerts, USP’s VP of Strategic Marketing and Program Operations, Food Science, at waf@usp.org.

^* http://www.gmaonline.org/downloads/research-and-reports/consumerproductfraud.pdf