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Food fraud and counterfeit cotton: detectives untangling the global supply chain
- ilamont 5y agoMost recently, the apparel world has been roiled by revelations that cotton from Xinjiang, in China, is being grown and processed using forced labour. The scandal implicated some of the world’s biggest brands, including H&M, Nike, Adidas and Gap, and prompted sanctions and restrictions in the west on imports made of Xinjiang cotton. Last August, not long after the US banned all imports containing Xinjiang cotton, US customs authorities asked Oritain for a pilot demonstration of its cotton-tracing abilities. This is one of the reasons China is going particularly ballistic over Xinjiang cotton. In the past supply chain controversies could be "fixed" relatively easy with bogus local inspections, fake documentation, or supplier shell games, but the science here is harder to fool. This not just an issue for cotton. As the article notes, fake fish can be spotted with genetic analysis, and that's a global problem with very local consequences. The Boston Globe did a big report on this a few years back, concluding many local restaurants and markets in Eastern Massachusetts were flat-out lying about the fish they were selling: Ken’s Steak House in Framingham again served Pacific cod instead of a more expensive Atlantic species. Slices of fish sold as white tuna at Sea To You Sushi in Brookline were again actually escolar, an oily species nicknamed the “ex-lax’’ fish by some in the industry because it can cause digestion problems. H Mart, an Asian supermarket chain found to have sold mislabeled red snapper last year, this time was selling inexpensive freshwater Nile perch as pricier ocean grouper at its Burlington store. https://www3.bostonglobe.com/business/specials/fish/?arc404=true https://www3.bostonglobe.com/business/specials/fish/?arc404=...
- MattGaiser 5y agoBack in university, I had a class that required I get up early some mornings so I walked past a lot of sushi places as fish was getting delivered. Lots of places getting boxes labelled escolar, but nobody had anything but tuna on the menu.
- wil421 5y agoJust to nitpick slightly there is no such thing as white tuna. What’s called white tuna is always escolar. Albacore is a pinkish or off white tuna but I’ve never seen it listed as white tuna at a restaurant.
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- vharuck 5y agoOut of curiosity, I wondered if the FDA agreed. And they do: https://www.cfsanappsexternal.fda.gov/scripts/fdcc/index.cfm?set=SeafoodList&id=Lepidocybium_flavobrunneum https://www.cfsanappsexternal.fda.gov/scripts/fdcc/index.cfm... The FDA does warn against using the name "white tuna," but they sure don't seem to care in practice.
- markdown 5y agoThe FDA cares very little about most things in practice. So long as they've issued warnings (ass-covering), they'll let mislabelling and false advertising go on willy nilly. They only get serious if people get sick. Using the wrong fish generally isn't going to make people sick.
- paxys 5y agoAlso makes me think that if two different varieties of fish, steak etc. are so indistinguishable to the end consumer that you have to rely on genetic analysis to separate them, what warrants the massively inflated price of one over the other? If I order a $500 bottle of wine but am served from a $50 bottle, and neither I nor anyone else at the table can tell the difference, did I not still get the $500 "experience" I wanted?
- ketzo 5y agoI mean, to be fair, it's not like you're sampling the fish at the market. Plus, most people don't assume they're being lied to; your thought might very well be, "huh, this is some pretty bad Atlantic cod" instead of "this must be the inferior Pacific cod!"
- quartesixte 5y agoSpecifically with fish, it depends on what you’re trying to fool with what. But I also wonder if the way most fish seems to be cooked in Western cuisine — fillet’d and seared/fried — masquerades the physical qualities that differentiate types of fish.
- 0x000000001 5y agoThe fake fish situation is well documented in the book Real Food/Fake Food http://www.realfoodfakefood.com/real-food-fake-food-book-by-larry-olmsted.html http://www.realfoodfakefood.com/real-food-fake-food-book-by-...
- m463 5y agoI wonder how much "crab" in restaurants is crab. On the other hand, I wonder how much "seafood soup" is actually the real deal (sharkfin soup)
- wyre 5y agoWhy does seafood soup imply shark fin soup? Are you not concerned with the ethical concerns around sharkfin soup?
- m463 5y agoI was told restaurants that used to serve sharkfin soup served "seafood soup" after sharkfin was made illegal. The gist of what I was saying was that crab -> fake, and ironically "seafood soup" was actually genuine sharkfin
- quartesixte 5y agoUnless I’m cracking open the shell of a 8 legged creature with claws I don’t believe for a minute I’m truly being served crab.
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- quartesixte 5y agoI love eating fish but I refuse to buy fillets because of all the fraudulent activity. At least when I buy fish whole I know what I’m getting (on a species to species level at least. Farmed/Wild/Specific region is trickier to spot) Red Snappers and Nile Perches are very different looking fish, but you’d have to buy them whole.
- yaur 5y agoI’m not sure I’ve ever gone somewhere (for retail fish) where you could buy a whole fish where they wouldn’t filet it for you while you are standing there. Of course those bones and head make good stock so I try usually buy whole fish anyway.
- quartesixte 5y agoGo to Korean or Chinese supermarkets — fish served whole.
- yaur 5y agoI’ve only been to Midwest and east coast Asian markets, but I’ve never had a request to break down a fish turned down. If you are having trouble finding something your area H-Mart (which I think is pretty ubiquitous) will break down a fish you select in a manner you specify.
- nitwit005 5y agoClearly, the next step is to create a fake origin tracing firm.
- ilamont 5y agoJust over a year ago, at least two textile and fiber watchdogs faced scrutiny for their links to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a quasi-military organization that the U.S. government sanctioned in 2020 due to its role in operating mass internment camps and using forced labor in cotton fields. https://www.axios.com/global-textile-watchdogs-struggled-in-xinjiang-4fab92bd-c606-456b-b905-1f3458bcf453.html https://www.axios.com/global-textile-watchdogs-struggled-in-...
- pphysch 5y agoSources: Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, Darren Byler, and Adrian Zenz. This should be hilarious to anyone who has been scrutinizing the Xinjiang narratives closely.
- ilamont 5y agoThis should be hilarious to anyone who has been scrutinizing the Xinjiang narratives closely. "Hilarious" is not the reaction that comes to mind.
- pphysch 5y agoI think it is, just like I would e.g. characterize an article that sources Mike Pompeo as a neutral expert on Iran as hilariously unserious.
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- dustintrex 5y agoContext: A lot of Adrian Zenz's "research" is pretty sketchy. However, a lot of criticism directed his way is straight up Chinese propaganda, which also means that anybody else questioning his methods gets labeled as a wumao shill.
- BugsJustFindMe 5y ago> Most recently, the apparel world has been roiled by revelations that cotton from Xinjiang, in China, is being grown and processed using forced labour. The scandal...prompted sanctions and restrictions in the west on imports made of Xinjiang cotton. This is super weird because the US _also_ still uses forced prison labor to pick cotton.
- RegnisGnaw 5y agoSo your equating prison in the US to the camps in Xinjiang?
- pphysch 5y agoNo, US prison camps are definitely worse due to their scale and history. > Many of these prisons had very recently been slave plantations, Angola and Mississippi State Penitentiary (known as Parchman Farm) among them. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/prison-labor-in-america/406177/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/prison-... Uncomfortable truth. Will probably get flagged.
- anonchan 5y agoThe forced labor described in the article is unjustifiable. But China imprisoning populations solely for having a different religion and culture is worse than America imprisoning people for (at least mostly) real criminal convictions.
- pphysch 5y ago> But China imprisoning populations solely for having a different religion and culture Do you have any evidence for this claim that isn't compromised by a State Department-sized CoI? I'm genuinely curious.
- random314 5y agoIs that so hard to find? Here is a list of academics jailed for their ethnicity, as part if the genocide. https://shahit.biz/supp/list_003.pdf https://shahit.biz/supp/list_003.pdf
- OldHand2018 5y agoThis is an interesting article. It also makes me think that this kind of analysis presents a lot of opportunities. Take for example the Chinese beef being labeled as premium New Zealand beef and sold for much higher prices in supermarkets. If shoppers can't tell the difference without this analysis, then it implies that the price differential between these two products is larger than it should be. That specific Chinese beef producer is likely selling his product to a wholesaler at a standard (low) price. It is somewhere else in the supply chain that the mislabeling comes in - and that is the entity that makes the profit. If that beef producer was aware that his beef is selling at a much higher retail price, then he should be selling his product to the wholesaler at a much higher price. What prevents this from happening? Well, knowledge (and a marketing budget). There should be plenty of capital available to solve that problem :)
- runsWphotons 5y agoI don’t think it’s true it implies the price differential is wrong. Just because you can’t tell the difference by consuming it, it doesn’t mean there is no difference you should care about.
- jdavis703 5y agoIn a lot of cases we can taste the difference. Organic vs. conventional chicken has a different mouthfeel. And Wagyu Beef vs. regular beef also has a similar different feel. However I also buy free-range organic eggs and milk. I’d have no idea if those products were mislabeled. But it also makes me feel better I’m not contributing to cruel factory farming and antibiotic abuse. If that’s not the case, oh well. I did all I could reasonably do aside from going vegan.
- OldHand2018 5y agoYou can't pass off non-Wagyu beef as Wagyu beef unless the consumer doesn't know what Wagyu beef is. I totally disagree with the organic vs conventional chicken argument. I would suggest that the difference you notice is the breed of the chicken. Organic vs non-organic and free-range vs non-free-range is not something where you'd say that there is an information arbitrage opportunity. The concept was that this analysis could be used to identify opportunity, not that every single instance of label fraud was an opportunity. Sheesh.
- rapjr9 5y agoFrom the article: "If the elements in the soil and water of a region work their way into the plants grown there, they also work their way into our bodies when we eat the produce of those plants, or when we eat the meat of animals fed on those plants. We ingest these elements, process them, and use them to build flesh, teeth and bones. So the elements making up our bodies can tell us something about the food we’ve eaten and the land that supports us." Seems like the same idea would apply to regional differences in health including mental health. An obvious one would be if the land is high in lead, the people living on it might be more violent. Areas with oil wells are likely affecting air and food quality. Maybe areas with a lot of lithium result in happier people. Western medicine has largely ignored environmental effects. A map of background radiation levels across the world might have an interesting health story to tell as could multi-spectral satellite imagery. Oritain might be sitting on a wealth of very useful health data, unaware of it.
- kiklion 5y ago> Western medicine has largely ignored environmental effects. I wouldn’t say they ignored it, instead environmental effects aren’t in scope to medicine. If your doctor said ‘you live on Long Island so you have a higher chance of breast cancer, combined with your family history, I advise you to sell everything and move your family.’ The vast majority of people are going yo ignore that. Even if you have the means to move, your doctor can’t quantify your local ties and relationships in a meaningful way to determine if increased risks from the environment are worth it.
- aomobile 5y agoInteresting thought.. and the data is surely available, someone must just find it and use it to connect the dots
- TeMPOraL 5y agoI think a sanity check heuristic applies: if the environmental effects on health were big enough to matter, the local government would turn the whole area into an exclusion zone (if effects were negative) or a vacation place (if they were positive). Since those things don't seem to happen, we can tentatively assume those effects don't rise above the noise floor. (Same thing applies to dietary disinformation: if some foodstuffs were to actually increase your chance of cancer meaningfully, they'd be classified as hazardous substances. If they were to visibly improve your health, they'd be regulated as drugs.)
- Animats 5y agoI want UL certification fraud investigation. Someone should be buying random phone chargers, e-bike batteries, and scooters, and running them through the usual tests. If the certifications are fake, someone should go to jail.
- folmar 5y agoIn Germany Stiftung Warentest buys multiple samples of things to test in random shops around the country.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoTropfen auf den heißen Stein...