@article{JRC126785,
	number = {KJ-NA-30877-EN-N (online)},
	address = {Luxembourg (Luxembourg)},
	issn = {1831-9424 (online)},
	year = {2021},
	author = {Maquet A and Lievens A and Paracchini V and Kaklamanos G and De La Calle Guntinas MB and Garlant L and Papoci S and Pietretti D and Ždiniaková T and Breidbach A and Omar Onaindia J and Boix Sanfeliu A and Dimitrova T and Ulberth F},
	isbn = {978-92-76-42979-1 (online)},
	publisher = {Publications Office of the European Union},
	abstract = {Culinary herbs and spices are valued for flavouring food and could also provide other beneficial properties, such as antioxidative and bacteriostatic effects as well as certain pharmacological activities. Their supply chain is complex, long, and globalised. Europe is one of the world’s leading importing regions for herbs and spices, importing approximately 300.000 tons, mostly spices from East Asia. Most of the spices are produced in countries where certain post-harvest processes such as drying and cleaning may happen before being shipped to the importing country where they are further cleaned and sanitised before being packaged and distributed either to other food businesses or for retail consumption. At each stage, fraudulent manipulations may happen and the more often the material is transferred from one operator to the next, the fraud opportunity increases.
		Information available to the European Commission indicates that adulterated herbs and spices are present on the EU market but remain undetected. Therefore, the European Commission set up a coordinated control plan inviting the EU member states to sample certain herbs and spices and send them for analysis to the Joint Research Centre. The main objective of the plan was to establish the prevalence on the market of some non-compliances and of some possible illegal practices into marketing of herbs and spices. Twenty-one EU member states plus Norway and Switzerland submitted nearly 1900 samples to JRC for analysis. The majority of samples was ground or crushed. 
		The co-ordinated control plan encompassed cumin, curcuma (turmeric), oregano, paprika/chilli, pepper, and saffron, as those were frequently reported to be the target of manipulations.
		Nearly 10.000 analyses were carried out on 1885 samples using a range of state-of-the-art analytical techniques to assess the purity of the samples (‘true to the name’).
		The EU coordinated control plan is until now the largest investigation into the authenticity of culinary herbs and spices in terms of participating countries and number of analyses.
		The overall rate of suspicious samples was 17% (323 of a total of 1885 analysed samples), which is less than what was previously reported in the scientific literature or by national food control institutions.
		The oregano supply chain was most vulnerable as 48% of samples were suspicious of being adulterated, in most cases with olive leaves. The percentage of samples which were suspicious of adulteration were 17% for pepper, 14% for cumin, 11% for curcuma, and 11% for saffron. The lowest suspicion rate (6%) was found for paprika/chilli. The majority of suspicious samples contained non-declared plant material; in 2% of the analysed spice samples non-authorised dyes were detected. One sample contained a high level of lead chromate. 
		No specific trend regarding the rate of potential fraudulent manipulations along the supply chain (country of origin/importers/wholesalers/processors/packagers) could be observed. However, the number of samples obtained at certain stages (domestic production, local markets, border control, and internet) was too low to enable statistically meaningful comparisons.
		},
	title = {Results of an EU wide coordinated control plan to establish the prevalence of fraudulent practices in the marketing of herbs and spices
		},
	url = {},
	doi = {10.2760/309557 (onl