The New Zealand branch of international consultancy firm PwC has launched a global food safety business following worldwide incidents of food fraud.
The firm was working with State-owned auditing, certification and testing agency AssureQuality, and PwC spokesperson Craig Armitage said it was focusing on food producers in Asia.
"There are areas of certain markets where they're not adopting best practise, and they can actually save costs buy adopting food safety regimes."
That would be through such things as better handling of food in the supply chain, leading to less wastage, he said.
"Food fraud is almost at epidemic proportions across the globe. We saw recently nuts being supplemented in place of cumin seeds in spice mixes. We've had the horse meat scandal.
"More recently we've seen an outbreak of hepatitis A in Australia from berries being sourced through China."
Government agencies, such as the United States Food and Drug Agency, were looking to have an oversight of all food coming into the US market, Mr Armitage said.
