How ‘fingerprinting’ technology could help prevent another horse meat scam.

Professor Chris Elliott is something of a ‘food detective’.
A Professor of Food Safety and Microbiology at Queen’s University Belfast and a founding director of its Institute for Global Food Security (IGFS), his work is all about developing scientific solutions to protect us from contaminated food, be it accidental or criminal.

Following the 2013 horse meat scandal – when prepared foods purporting to be made from beef were found to contain undeclared horse-meat – Chris conducted the independent review of the UK food system that brought to light the growing threat of food crime. Since then, his name’s become synonymous with solving cases of food fraud; today he receives regular tip-offs on everything from oregano scams to dodgy potatoes.

But as Chris tells Jim Al-Khalili, his team at the IGFS are pioneering new techniques to read the molecular fingerprint of foodstuffs, with technology that they hope will stop the fraudsters in their tracks…

Producer: Lucy Taylor

Source: BBC Radio 4 – The Life Scientific, Chris Elliott on fighting food fraud