Opinion: Fraser Edwards, co -founder and general director of Cheqd
Brutal honesty has its own place, especially when confronted with discomfort, so here is one that you can’t sweeten with honey: 96% of imported honey in Great Britain is false! Tests showed that 24 out of 25 jars were suspicious Or did not meet the regulatory standards.
The identity of self -determination (SSI) can fix it.
The British Food Standards Agency and the European Commission call for a reform to solve this problem, creating solid identification database in the supply chain networks to ensure transparency and trust of consumers. However, the data is not a problem. The problem is that people manipulate it.
It has not been revealed that the products are inauthentic for the first time, with the Honey Authenticity Network network Highlighting that one third of all honey products was false in 2020, a false industry ateg up to EUR 3.4 billion (USD 3.65 million) of counterfeit goods entering the EU in 2023, as reported by the European Commission.
What is EMA and how does it affect honey?
Economically motivated adultery (EMA) include Intentional replacement of valuable ingredients with cheaper products such as sweeteners or low -quality oil. This practice leads to grave economic and health complications – and in some cases of illness – due to poisonous supplements from substitute products.
Adultery often lies in the creation of an ultra-over-translated mixture containing a minimum nutritional value, and the counterfeiters call it … honey.
Fraudsters dilute a high -fructose product of corn syrup or augment the thickness with starch or gelatin. These adultery mimics the chemical profile of honey, which makes it challenging to detect conventional tests such as mass spectrometry ratio of isotope. False honey does not have significant enzymes that give real honey its taste and nutrients. Even worse, the features of Honey are different depending on the nectar sources, the season, geography and others season.
Some companies Filter The content of pollen, a key identifier of honey geographical origin, before exporting it to intermediary countries, such as Vietnam or India, to darken the process even more. After this, the products are transferred to shelves in the supermarket and marked with false certificates to obtain higher prices. This tactic uses the fact that many regulatory bodies have no means of verification of each parcel.
Hidden cost of food fraud
The supply chain is deeply broken when a jar of honey goes from six to eight key points in the supply chain before it appears on the shelves in Great Britain. Current practices make verification of authenticity extremely challenging. In combination with incompetent bureaucracy based on paper, which hinders to track attempts to unknown origin in intermediary countries, we cannot reliably determine the true range of food fraud.
One Food and Drug Administration (FDA) It is estimated that it affects at least 1% of the global food industry, potentially to $ 40 billion a year – and can be even higher.
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Not only fraudulent practices not only harm consumers – they destroy the sources of beekeepers, flooding the market and destroy the profitability of legal traders. Ziya Sahin, Turkish beekeeper, explained Frustration Food fraud regulation:
“Our beekeepers are bad and ask why we do not do something to stop it. But we do not have the right to check,” he said. “I can’t even ask street sellers if their honey is real.”
While it grows appetite For more reliable testing and more severe enforcement, the solutions are delayed. The latest EU repair attempt? Digital product passports are designed to track the origin and composition of Honey, but are already criticized as ineffective and effortless to manipulate, ultimately leaving the door open so that the cheater is continued.
EU passports are an ineffective solution
The digital passport of European Union products is aimed at solving this by increasing identification and transparency in supply chains. By 2030, all goods in the EU must have a digital product passport Containing detailed information on the product life cycle, origin and environmental effects.
Although the idea sounds promising, it does not recognize the scope in which fraudsters can form certificates and unclear origin, passing products through indirect countries with officials who close their eyes.
At the root of this problem is trust. Despite the history showing that these rules can and will be bent, we rely on the rule of implementing regulations and regulations. On the other hand, the technology is agnostic and does not care about money or incentive.
This is a basic defect in the EU approach – a system built on human supervision, which is exposed to corruption, from which supply chains are already known.
Self -determination identity (SSI) for products
Many people are already aware of the scalability of the triumb, but the triangle is a key concept in the SSI, which determines the way of determining trust between issuers, owners and verifiers. This makes the fraud much more challenging, because each product must be supported by possible to verify a confirmation from a trusted source to prove that it is real.
Issues, such as producers or certification authorities, create and sign verifiable certificates that testify to the authenticity of the product. The owner, usually the product owner, stores and presents these certificates if necessary. Verifiers – such as retailers, customs officials or consumers – can check the validity of certificates without relying on the central authority.
Verifiable certificates are protected by cryptography. If someone is trying to sell false products, their lack or incorrect certificates will immediately reveal a fraud.
Government reforms must go beyond the current regulatory supervision and examine the approach outlined in trilling of confidence to protect supply chains against widespread falsification and fraud.
SSI provides the basic infrastructure necessary for reliable tracking of product identity in many organs, standards and regions. By enabling resistance to manipulation, comprehensive identification in each product-no matter if a jar of honey or a designer-SSI handbag ensures that sufficient validations confirm that the data is correct to solve the attempts at fraud and darkening.
SSI also enables consumers to independently verify products without relying on databases of other companies. Buyers can scan the product to authenticate its origin and history directly through cryptographic certificates confirmed by the validaries to further reduce the risk of disinformation, even if it reaches shelves. It would also support reduce corruption and incompetent, because many controls are performed on paper that can be easily changed and is a tardy process.
As honey fraud develops, as is the damage to these products for consumers and local companies. The steps taken to solve these methods must also be expanded. EU digital passports are aimed at improving identification; But unfortunately they don’t have sophistication of fraudsters. The implementation of SSI is a necessary step to effectively solve the scope of fraudsters to ensure that their product will appear on the shelves.
Opinion: Fraser Edwards, co -founder and general director of Cheqd.
This article is used for general information purposes and should not be and should not be treated as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are themselves and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
