Concluding remarks and future perspectives

Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) is a very versatilely used technology for food authentication. This chapter summarizes and analyzes the inventories conducted in the former chapters and covers the following product groups: cereals and products thereof; oils and fats; milk and products thereof; meat, eggs, and fish/seafood; honey and bee products; fruits, vegetables, nuts, and fungi; herbs and spices; fruit juices; coffee and tea; and beer, wine, and other alcoholic beverages. For all product groups, at least two types of food fraud are addressed by methodologies inventoried in this book. These are mostly methods for authentication of the botanical origin/species of the products and the verification of their geographical origin. Geographical origin, production system origin, and processing origin usually require fingerprint-type (non-targeted) methods which combine analytical chemistry with advanced multivariate statistics (chemometrics). On the other hand, targeted GC/MS methods are also available, especially for measurement of known adulterants, e.g., syrups in honey, nitrogen inflaters in dairy products, as well as protein hydrolysates, paraffin, dyes, and unapproved flavorings. Animal-based products appear to be covered by GC/MS methods for a wider range of types of fraud than plant-based products. This is most likely not for a technical reason but related to the wider spread attention to these products because of higher fraud incident rates.