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FREE LECTURE: Forensic Chemistry and Food Provenancing

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Today's date is Friday, March 29, 2024
Forensic Chemistry and Food Provenancing : An interesting expose on the application of Forensic Chemistry in the arena of food provenancing. Other events...
Forensic Chemistry is a varied and interesting field with applications not only in law enforcement, but also in other investigative areas including the failure of products or processes, archaeology, and most recently, food provenancing. Fraudulent activities such as the intentional counterfeiting, substitution, adulteration or mislabelling of food to gain an economic advantage, are major issues facing the food industry. Food fraud is highly lucrative because, unlike CDs, shoes and Rolex watches, food is cheap, easy to copy and frauds are difficult to detect. Since the mid 1980s, there has been an increase in both research and in the development of techniques to enable the food industry to determine the geographical origin of foodstuffs. The technology used is based on the trace element composition of plant materials and animal products from animals which graze or consume plants as a nutrition source. Plants grown in different geographical locations would be expected to exhibit different trace element profiles as a result of growing on different soils. Results of recent research in WA have indicated that it is possible not only to establish country of origin of some materials, but also in some cases, state of origin and even to the plantation origin of tea and coffee. John will discuss forensic chemistry in general and the food provenancing research and casework he has been involved in.

Prof. Watling heads the Forensic and Analytical Chemistry Group of the Centre for Forensic Science at the University of Western Australia. He has developed laser technology aimed at finding the chemical signature of solid objects – whether fingerprinting gold, diamonds, bullets, Aboriginal art, antiques or plant material. According to Prof. Watling, the technology has already saved the State over $1 billion in gold theft reduction alone. “The technology is akin to taking a microscopic sunbeam and placing it anywhere on the surface of a sample to obtain point-by-point analyses,” he says. From identifying Chinese Ming and Japanese Imari porcelain forgeries, to determining the geographic origin of wine and foodstuff, the work of Professor Watling and his students is internationally renowned.
Speaker(s) Winthrop Professor John Watling
Location Webb Lecture Theatre (Geography LT 1, Room 21), UWA
Contact Margaret Brocx <[email protected]>
URL http://www.rswa.org.au
Start Mon, 18 Apr 2011 19:00
End Mon, 18 Apr 2011 20:30
Submitted by Margaret Brocx <[email protected]>
Last Updated Fri, 08 Apr 2011 16:22
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