Fighting Food Fraud with EMAlert™ 

Wood pulp in shredded Parmesan cheese. Melamine in baby formula and pet food. Asian catfish sold as grouper. Pomegranate juice cut with grape juice. These are examples of food fraud, more formally known as economically motivated adulteration (EMA), an established threat to grocery manufacturers. 

To help combat this issue, Battelle and the Grocery Manufacturers Association have partnered to provide EMAlert™, a secure, comprehensive and intuitive software tool that enables food manufacturers to rapidly analyze and understand EMA vulnerabilities. 

Applications 

An issue that compromises the integrity of the food supply chain can result not only in lost consumer trust and induced fear amongst the general public, it can represent a threat to public health.  

Capabilities 

EMAlert produces quantitative vulnerability results, allowing for the prioritization of mitigation efforts associated with EMA threats. 

It works by providing quantitative estimates of an organization’s vulnerability to EMA for each commodity included. The analysis is based on a combination of characteristic attributes and subject matter expert-based weightings. 

The EMAlert tool, found at www.EMAlert.org, can: 

• Rapidly analyze and understand EMA threats 
• Prioritize mitigation efforts associated with EMA threats 
• Produce quantitative risk ranking results 

Features 

The EMAlert approach focuses on predicting fraudulent tendencies similar to approaches used by Battelle for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to predict terrorist tendencies and preferences. 

Secure, Yet Easily Accessible - Web-hosted, easily accessible from a computer or tablet and an internet connection at www.EMAlert.org  

Live Commodity-Attribute Data - Continuously updated from the sources and reflected in real-time 

Quantitative in Nature - Provides a numerical risk rating of EMA 

Flexible Design - Easily adapts to potential future enhancements 

Forward View of Threats - Presents current and future threats in addition to leveraging a database of past incidents 

Aids FSMA Compliance - Assists with new FDA Preventative Controls for Human Food requirement 

Benefits 

Using EMAlert to analyze the attributes that contribute strongly to existing vulnerabilities gives food safety and defense professionals an opportunity to identify alternative strategies. Those alternatives could include identifying suppliers from a more favorable region of the world or investing in research to develop identity tests for targeted commodities. 

Rapidly assessing and understanding EMA vulnerabilities with EMAlert enables mitigation actions to be prioritized and pursued, and is essential to protecting both public health and brand reputation.