Being able to verify place of origin and quickly identify counterfeit food products adds value for New Zealand produce and could minimise the damage caused by substandard "fakes".
Oritain is a New Zealand company, operating globally, to link products with geographical locations by studying levels of certain types of carbon, nitrogen
and hydrogen and trace elements.
Chief executive Helen Darling spoke to delegates at the Horticulture New Zealand conference in Rotorua yesterday explaining how the new techniques being developed could benefit the sector.
"You really are what you eat and we can use that to determine where a product has come from."
Darling explained how the environmental and geographical conditions - including water and soil composition - and farming methods affected the chemical make-up of produce and livestock, making it possible for the company to trace the origins of food stuffs back to a particular property or even part of that property.
"You can get market premium if you can differentiate your product. One Australian wine grower can now get 20 per cent more in market because he can differentiate."
She said the process had come out of forensic science used to determine where unidentified bodies had lived or where certain strains of anthrax were from and offered individual producers and the wider New Zealand export industry the chance to prove their goods were genuine New Zealand lamb or Marlborough wine.
"Zespri kiwifruit is one of the top counterfeit items in the world, after the likes of Louis Vuitton."
While imitation is the most genuine form of flattery, Darling said substandard, diseased or contaminated fake products could cause significant damage to a company, an industry or a country's reputation.
By producing baseline data for products now, she said it would later be possible to quickly prove whether problematic goods' origins matched their labelling.
