„Let us develop geographical indication of your product…“

Isotope analyses are more and more becoming a decisive factor related to the sensitivity, and monitoring of products not only in trade on national markets, but globally. One of the very important items is the ability to verify the authenticity of the product regardless of the documentation. Isotopic methods, which have shown that they can provide solutions in the analytical sense of verifying the origin of products, can thus very efficiently and quickly resolve disputes related to product quality deficiencies, as well as resolve disputes related to counterfeiting of original brands. By creating isotope databases of reference samples of a batch produced, it is possible to later compare product units in order to obtain reliable information on authenticity.

Stable isotopes analysis of the light elements, especially of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen isotopic ratios is now applied for food authenticity control more than 20 years. The aims of those investigations are preferably to check if products as wine, fruit juices, honey, spirits or milk had been extended or adulterated by illegal addition of water and/or sugars. For this purpose several official methods have been adopted by European or US authorities or institutions. For stable isotope methods used in food authenticity control it is necessary to have a database of results for authentic samples available, which can be used for comparison of data from commercial products with them.

Isotopic parameters can be very useful to check if a not adultered sample complies with its labelled geographical origin or year of vintage, as there are climatic and environmental differences, eg mean temperature, amount of precipitation, air humidity, between different growing regions, or in one region between different vintages. Additional stable isotope parameters have been analyzed and found applicable and useful for geographical origin assignment, not only of wine and fruit products, but even of animal food commodities as milk, butter, cheese and meet.