Over the past few years, as eaters around the world come to terms with their food and where it comes from, we’ve also learned about the shadowy world of food adulteration, or as it’s commonly known, food fraud. Fraud—when phantom ingredients are hiding in food or cheaper items are passed off as the more expensive version—happens for a few reasons. Usually it’s cost, where substituting ingredients that consumers may never detect can affect the bottom line, especially at large scale.

But questions arise about our food because of its origin, too, which isn’t always easy to pinpoint. The primary agency in the U.S. that tries to root out fraud is the Food and Drug Administration. Yet the agency’s mandate is primarily