3 replies to this topic

[Danielle D]

Hello,  we have been using HorizonScan for 3 years now and it was great for our initial set up of our risk assessment but we haven't gotten much use out of it since. The ingredients we procure are not generally seen to have issues. It is very expensive at 3K per year and I have a hard time justifying it to upper management. I was looking at just the food fraud database (link below) since it is much cheaper. Has anyone used this database and find it works for your assessment?

Decernis - Food Fraud Database

 

Do you have any other recommendations for databases or websites to try? I have signed up for Trello but also find that to be not as helpful as Horizonscan has been. Any advice is welcomed! Thanks! 

[Charles.C]

Hello,  we have been using HorizonScan for 3 years now and it was great for our initial set up of our risk assessment but we haven't gotten much use out of it since. The ingredients we procure are not generally seen to have issues. It is very expensive at 3K per year and I have a hard time justifying it to upper management. I was looking at just the food fraud database (link below) since it is much cheaper. Has anyone used this database and find it works for your assessment? Decernis - Food Fraud Database

Do you have any other recommendations for databases or websites to try? I have signed up for Trello but also find that to be not as helpful as Horizonscan has been. Any advice is welcomed! Thanks! 

 

Hi Danielle,

 

Decernis, afaik, is derived from the respected,  previously free-to-access USP Database Project which (I predict) was probably the most popular (free) food fraud (FF)  data source at that time. I note that a free webinar is available. If this is similar to the one offered 2-3 years back, content then looked quite impressive, particularly in respect to cross-indexing capabilities.

 

Mentions of HorizonScan w/wo other options here -

 

https://www.ifsqn.co...e-2#entry140575

https://www.ifsqn.co...es/#entry119528

https://www.ifsqn.co...ts/#entry104659

 

Some mentions of other options (some overlaps to above) here -

 

https://www.ifsqn.co...011#entry140011

(et seq)

https://www.ifsqn.co...nt/#entry130045

https://www.ifsqn.co...ds/#entry137608

 

As you can see, general focus more on free systems.

 

This survey maybe covers the field as of 2018. note that USP "became"  Decernis.

 

 food fraud monitoring systems,2018.pdf   1.39MB   104 downloads

 

The momentum to develop FF-related facilities  seems (to me) to have somewhat slowed of late due relative absence of disasters like melamine.

 

Hopefully someone here has used both Horizon Scan and Decernis and can give a user comparison.

[Danielle D]

Thank you for the information! Seems most still liked to use Horizon Scan. 

 

Yes, I am hoping someone will comment who has had experience with both so a comparison can be given! 

 

Thanks again! 

[Skyhawk]

Hi Danielle,

 

We have used both the original USP Food Fraud DB, which was acquired by Decernis, and then last year upgraded to Horizon Scan.

 

The reason for changing was (my perceived) better search capability and more applicable data for the type of products (~3000 different Ingredients) that we work with. A lot of the incident reports (in both databases) of course relate to retail ready products, but I'm looking for potential impacts from the original ingredients, which does require a bit more investigation, and I found the search results in Horizon Scan more user friendly in this respect.

 

I agree that Horizon Scan is more expensive, and I initially found it a bit of "information overload", but the notification settings are customisable, so we've now been able to tailor the notifications to our product range. So our weekly notification emails are now much more informative & user friendly that Decernis was.
So IMO the extra cost of Horizon Scan is justified, based on more efficient access to applicable information.

 

Hope this helps, and HNY for 2021. 

 

Kind Regards
Debbie Hawkes