Beyond Single Tests: How Data Fusion is Redefining Food Fraud Detection

Achieving high confidence in analytical results for food fraud investigations is a complex challenge. However, data fusion is revolutionizing the way we detect and deter food fraud—offering greater reliability, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness than single-method approaches. This webinar explores how integrating diverse data sources including elemental and molecular spectroscopic fingerprints through to organic mass spectrometry profiles enhances food authenticity testing. 

You will discover how different fusion strategies, from low- to high-level integration, are applied in real-world case studies, including determining the geographic origin of salmon and soy, and identifying varieties of premium teas. The session will conclude with some thoughts about how the data fusion approach could overcome some of the very big authenticity challenges such as olive oil and honey analysis.

Key Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the financial, political, and legal impacts of global food fraud on producers and consumers.
• Understand the strengths and limitations of molecular spectroscopy and mass spectrometry techniques in detecting food fraud.
• Learn how combining data from multiple techniques can push analytical certainty toward 100%.

Presenter: Chris Elliott (Inst. for Global Security, Belfast, UK)

Chris is the founder of the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University Belfast and is a Honorary Professor there now. He is also Professor of Food Security at Thamassat University in Thailand. He has published over 600 peer-reviewed articles on the detection and control of agriculture, food, and environmental-related contaminants. Chris led the independent review of Britain’s food system following the 2013 horsemeat scandal and now acts as a scientific advisor for a range of United Nations Agencies, governments, and industries on a range of food security topics.

Over the years Chris has developed a high level network of collaborators across Europe, the United States , the Middle East and Asia. He is a recipient of a Winston Churchill Fellowship and is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Royal Society of Biology. Chris has received numerous prizes and awards for his work such as the Royal Society of Chemistry Theophilus Redwood Prize and an OBE in 2017. He was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2020 and became Vice President of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health in 2021 and Honorary President of the Society of Food Hygiene and Technology in 2023.