Opinion by: Fraser Edwards, Co-Founder and CEO, CHEQD
Cruel honesty has its own place, especially when inconvenience is faced, so here is one that cannot be sweet with honey: 96% of the honey imported in Britain is fake! Tests found that 24 out of 25 were jars Suspicious Or did not meet the regulatory standards.
Self-confidence identity (SSI) can cure this.
Both UK Food Standards Agency and European Commission urge the improvement to deal with this concern by creating a strong traceability Database Consumer within the supply chain network to ensure transparency and confidence. Data, however, does not have problems. The issue is that people are tampering with it.
This is not the first time products have been revealed to be inhuman, with a honey authenticity network. Thrown light on One-third of all honey products were fake in 2020, a fraud industry Amount For 3.4 billion euros ($ 3.65 million) of fake goods entering the European Union in 2023, as reported by the European Commission.
What is EMA, and how does it affect honey?
Financially motivated adulteration (EMA) Involved To deliberately replace valuable materials for less expensive products such as sweetness or low quality oil. This practice leads to serious economic and health complications – and, in some cases, disease – due to poisonous additives from substitute products.
Adulteration often involves making an ultra-shock mixture that has a minimum nutritional value, and fake it is called honey.
Fraudsters dilute the product with high fructose corn syrup or increase thickness with starch or gelatin. These adulterations closely mimic the chemical profile of honey, which makes it extremely difficult to detect with traditional tests. Isotope ratio mass spectrometryFake honey lacks essential enzymes that give real honey its taste and nutrients. To make cases worse, honey features vary depending on nectar sources, crop season, geography and more.
Some companies filter out Pollen material, a major identifier of geographical origin of a honey, to further this process before exporting it to mediated countries such as Vietnam or India. Once it is done, the products are brought into supermarket shelves and labeled with false certificates for high prices command. This strategy exploits the fact that many regulatory bodies lack means to verify every shipment.
Hidden cost of food fraud
The supply chain is deepened in depth, as six to eight major points in the supply chain pass through honey before coming on shelves in the UK. Current practices make authentic verification extremely difficult. Coupled with unskilled paper-based bureaucracy that makes it difficult to track the original vague efforts in mediated countries, we cannot strengthen the correct range of food fraud.
One Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Estimates suggest that the global food industry is at least 1%, possibly up to $ 40 billion per year – is affected – and it can be even more.
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Fraud practices not only harm consumers – they destroy the livelihood of beekeepers, flood the market and destroy profitability for legitimate traders. Zia Sahin, a Turkish Madhumkipar, Explained Food with fraud regulation frustration:
He said, “Our bee foster is angry, and they ask why we are not doing anything to stop it. But we have no right to inspect,” he said. “I am not allowed to ask street sellers whether their honey is real.”
While one is growing hunger For more reliable testing and strict enforcement, solutions are lagging behind. The latest attempt by the European Union to fix this? Digital product passports are designed to track the origin and composition of Honey, but they are already being criticized as ineffective and easy to manipulate, eventually the door is being left open for fraud.
European Union passports are an ineffective solution
The aim of the European Union’s digital product passport aims to deal with it by increasing traceability and transparency in its supply chains. By 2030, all goods in the European Union should have a digital product Passport The life cycle of the product includes detailed information on the original and environmental effects.
While this idea seems promising, it fails to recognize to what extent the fraudsters can close their eyes with officers by passing the certificate and vague origin through the mediated countries.
There is faith in the core of this issue. Despite showing history that these rules can be and can be Libra, we rely on governments to implement laws and regulations. On the other hand, technology is, agnostic and does not care for money or encouragement.
It is the basic defect of the European Union’s approach – a system built on human inspection that is unsafe for corruption is already known for these supply chains.
Self-confidence for products (SSI)
Many people already know about scalability trilumma, but the trust triangle is an important concept in SSI that defines how the trust is established between the issuer, holders and verifier. This makes the fraud more challenging because each product should be supported by a reliable source by a verificationable credential to be real.
Like the issuer, manufacturers or certification bodies, create and sign a verified verification credentials that verify for the authenticity of a product. The holder, usually the product owner, stores and presents these credentials when necessary. Verifiers – such as retailers, customs officers or consumers – can check the validity of credentials without relying on a central authority.
Verification is protected by credentials cryptography. If someone tries to sell fake products, their missing or invalid credentials will immediately reveal fraud.
Government reforms should expand beyond the current regulatory inspection and detect the approach mentioned in Trust Trilumma to protect the supply chains from extensive adulteration and fraud.
SSI provides the underlying infrastructure required to strengthen the identification of products in many bodies, standards and regions. By enabling tampering-proofs, every product ensures an end-to-end traceability-a jar of honey or a designer handbag-SSI that sufficient verification confirms that the data is correct to deal with fraud and oblique efforts.
The SSI empowers consumers to independently verify the products without relying on the third party database. Buyers can scan the product to certify their origin and history directly to prove their origin and history, which may further reduce the risk of misinformation through cryptographic certificates confirmed by verifications to further reduce the risk of misinformation. It will also help in reducing corruption and disabilities, as several checks are done on paper, which can be easily replaced and a slow process.
Since the methods of honey cheating continue to expand, these products have to harm consumers and local businesses. The steps taken to deal with these methods should also be widespread. The European Union’s digital product passport aims to improve traceability; But unfortunately, they are less than the sophistication of the fraudsters. The implementation of SSI is an essential step to effectively address the fraudsters to their product to reach the shelves.
Opinion by: Fraser Edwards, Co-Founder and CEO, Czech.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intention and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The ideas, ideas and opinions expressed here are alone of the author and not necessarily reflected or represented the ideas and ideas of the components.
