FOOD science and the technology that underpins it is the study of a new Master of Food Science course which began this semester at the University of Western Australia (UWA).

“Industry-ready graduates from the new Masters degree will train in food provenance to guard against food fraud,” said UWA’s new Professor of Food Science, Professor Garry Lee.

Prof Lee said food fraud is big business, estimated to be worth $49 billion annually world wide.

UWA's new Master of Food Science course will devlop graduates into culinary detectives.
Image: Istockphoto

“Research has found that up to 10 percent of our groceries aren’t what they appear to be.

"We’ve seen melamine in milk, benzene in soft drinks, salmonella in peanuts, Nile perch sold as barramundi and Chinese wine labelled as coming from the Coonawarra region of Australia,” he said.

"The adulteration of food for economic gain occurs because we have the technology to produce, store and transport food products all around the world so there’s plenty of opportunity for human interference in that process. Sometimes it’s unintentional as in selling older produce labelled as fresh but often it’s a calculated, organised crime.

“I’ve seen prime Australian beef taken from its labelled boxes in Asia, sold at top price to wealthy customers, then poorer quality local beef repacked into the labelled boxes and sold as prime Australian beef.

“If a problem occurs, such as someone gets sick, the restaurant traces it back to the supplier who identifies it as Australian beef and we wear the blame.

“The result is loss of customer confidence, damage to our brand as clean and green, trade bans, other meat mandatorily destroyed and loss of revenue for our economy.”

 With funding from the pork industry, Prof Lee and his colleagues at the UWA Centre for Forensic Science and TSN Analytical have developed a technology called Physitrace which uses chemistry to trace WA produced pork back to the farm.

“We export a lot of our pork to Asia and if anything was wrong it could mean the entire market was thrown into chaos with billions of dollars lost. Using Physitrace, any suspect pork can be sent to us and within 36 hours we can identify where that pig came from so the whole industry is not hurt.”

Graduates with either a Science or Engineering degree can apply for the new Master of Food Science course.

As well as chemistry they will study biochemistry, nutrition, nanotechnology, microbiology, sensory science, forensic science and engineering.

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