Is a white glass of milk as innocent as it looks like? Are we drinking what we actually thought we bought? The food industry has been recently splashed by fraud scandals occuring at different stages of the chain production. It is not uncommon for example to find cheaper cow milk added to goat milk in products that should contain only goat milk. Fortunately most of these frauds are harmless but nevertheless, the law protects the consumer, and the consumer deserves to know what he is getting from the shop.
The University of Reading is now funding a new seeding project led by Dr Sokratis Stergiadis, from the division of Animal Science in the department of Agriculture, and ClausLab, from the department of Food & Nutritional Sciences, to investigate the composition of milk at the molecular level to help with the detection of unexpected compounds in dairy products. This project is supported by Salim Makni, who has just joined us to contribute to the study of NMR-based milk fingerprints. Ultimately, this translational research aims at providing easy, reliable and cost-effective dairy fraud detection.
Well done for getting this project funded!
