Food Fraudsters Targeted With Software to Protect Your Cheese
- New software designed to assess real-time risk of fraud
- About 10% of food in marketplace estimated to be adulterated
Is that Parmesan cheese or sawdust? With food fraud on the rise, a software that employs methods used to predict terrorist behavior can help settle the question, according to its developers.
The program, called EMAlert, models the decision-making behavior of fraudsters when they decide which food commodities to adulterate. Increasing cases of fraud have spurred consumer distrust, Joseph Scimeca, the vice president of regulatory and scientific affairs at Cargill Inc., said in an interview. Scimeca chairs a working group on fraud at the Grocery Manufacturers of America, a trade organization for food, beverage and consumer products companies, which developed the software with Battelle Memorial Institute, a non-profit research and development organization.