Investigation of vanilla fraud by French authorities

The DGCCRF (French department for competition, consumption and fraud prevention) has just published the results of its survey conducted in 2019 on the control of vanilla products.

The controls focused on the composition and labelling of vanilla products (beans, extracts, flavourings) and flavoured foodstuffs as well as on the search for fraud or misleading commercial practices.

Out of 113 samples, 23% of samples were non-compliant.

• Of the 22 vanilla beans sampled, 25% did not comply with the regulations (spent vanilla, vanilla bean dipped in vanilla flavouring, white powder labelled vanilla that was made of sugar flavoured with vanilin not derived from vanilla).
• 50% of the vanilla extracts did not comply with the regulations (vanilla flavouring mixed with water and labelled as vanilla concentrate, misuse of the terms "extract" and "natural" to qualify the same product, an extract being used by default for natural preparations)
• 50% of the natural vanilla flavourings were non-compliant (insufficient vanilin content or too high a proportion of vanilin from biotechnological processes, addition of aromatic caramel wrongly presented as a support for the flavourings whereas its role is to colour).
• 13 out of 38 flavourings were not compliant (vanilla sugar containing little or no vanilin or containing a synthetic compound (ethylvanilin), flavouring presented as natural vanilla when the vanilin is produced by biotechnological processes).

Phytocontrol offers to assist you in the search for vanilla authenticity and to control the absence of adulteration thanks to the determination of isotopic ratios and the analysis of the various vanilla compounds.

Do you need technical, regulatory and pricing information? Our customer service is available from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday on +33 800 900 775 or london@phytocontrol.com.

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