IDENTIFICATION AND COUNTERFEITATION OF RICE GRAINS SOLD IN THE RETAIL TRADE NETWORK

Abstract

Among the many problems that arise during food trade, their identification and adulteration are the most urgent and multifaceted. The lack of clear evaluation criteria and most often methodological bases, economic conditions that have developed and technologies that are actively developing – all this and much more contribute to the complexity of the identification process. This also increases the incidence of forgery, which is essentially one of two possible outcomes of identification. Therefore, detection of adulteration should be given special attention as one of the priority areas of ensuring the quality and safety of food products. Considering the large amount of information regarding the sale of counterfeit rice cereal on the counters of our stores, a study was conducted to identify such products. According to the results of the analysis of the identification features of rice grains sold in the retail trade network, it was established that all the studied samples correspond to the identification features of this type of product, since the results of the identification based on organoleptic and physicochemical characteristics proved that they can be attributed to the group "long-grain polished rice". Regarding the analysis of rice grains according to the criteria of signs of informational, assortment, quantitative and qualitative falsification, all samples of trademarks that were chosen for the study met the established requirements, except for one, which was found to have signs of falsification of quality and quantity, as well as informational falsification, therefore this cereal sample can be considered falsified. Based on the results of the research, ways were proposed that would make it impossible to falsify food products on the domestic consumer market.