VIDEO: Are tiger prawns labelled as being Australian, really from Australia?

JASON BERTOLDI, TECHNICAL OFFICER:  So these prawns say they are Australian tiger prawns and that is what we are going to find out whether that is true or not.

I might actually get another sheet and maybe I'll peel it on this one because it is going to get messy.

This is a portable handheld XRF machine. It is typically used in mining and exploration work or so jewellery stores will use these to see how much, if the gold's authentic and stuff like that. And it's been repurposed here at ANSTO for the food providence team. So it is measuring the elemental composition of food now and in this case prawns. 

You are what you eat. 

So the elemental fingerprint changes depending on the location that they are in. So what they're eating is different depending on where they are in the world. And so that accumulates in their bodies and then shows up variances that our mathematical model is able to pick up. 

It's a very simple process and the machine itself is non-destructive so you put the prawn straight on and you could even eat the prawn straight after, but we don't do that here. 

EMILY JANE SMITH:  So you’ve never had a sneaky prawn after for lunch?

JASON BERTOLDI:  No I feel I am more likely that I would be put off. 

So that's showing up the live results of what the instrument is picking up in real time.

DR DEBASHISH MAZUMDER, PRINCIPAL RESEARCH SCIENTIST:  Food fraud is tricking customer about its quality, content and source of origin for making money

It's very exciting because think about, it's such a complicated area of research, identifying source of origin, it's not an easy matter. It is a huge complicated thing. 

EMILY JANE SMITH:  So what's this?

DEBASHISH MAZUMDER: It's a Kakadu plum powder. Kakadu plum is one of the Australian iconic native bush food, has a very high vitamin C content 

There's a lot of product available in the market selling in the name of Kakadu Plum but may not be Kakadu plum.

So we purchased through online all this powder and we also collected the genuine one from our sources. So then we tested it. 

The result was very surprising. What we bought overseas online market, which is claimed as a genuine Kakadu plant powder was fake. 

EMILY JANE SMITH:  So these are all fake.

DEBASHISH MAZUMDER: All fake.

PATRICIA GADD, SCIENCE PROGRAM LEADER:  Our database is the backbone of the project. Without the database, we cannot predict anything with any certainty. We need to have a database which is quite robust as well as have samples on it, which we know has come from authentic sources

We have a partner in Sydney Fish Market and they have provided us with over a thousand samples

DEBASHISH MAZUMDER:  So for example, this is the tiger prawn and this is another tiger prawn. 

PATRICIA GADD:  To actually have points on a database, but that's not enough. We need more. 

Some of the other countries that we are working with are Bangladesh, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, and we're starting to look at other products that might be of interest to them. And these could include turmeric, mangoes, rice. 

JASON BERTOLDI:  So now that we sent off the data and we've got the summary back of the results.

The summary shows us that Woolworths and Coles both were more than likely to be of Australian farmed origin

However, the random seafood shop that we got the other tiger prawns from, we couldn’t really conclude much on that as it sat outside of our database, however we where we couldn’t conclude it, they were still most likely to be of Australian farmed origin but yeah, we weren’t as confident. 

DEBASHISH MAZUMDER: We showcase it is working but the database is the limited. At this moment, we are working with what we have. 

We want to at the same time want to refine this technology through our continuous developmental process. 

PATRICIA GADD:  My hope for this technology is that hopefully one day we can just get our smartphone out and there'll be a barcode on everything we buy, and we'll be able to see exactly where that food came from and what the composition of that food is.