Saskia van Ruth is a full professor of Food Supply Chain Integrity at University College Dublin’s School of Agriculture and Food Science. She specialises in food fraud prevention and advanced authentication technologies.
After completing her PhD in food chemistry at Wageningen University, she worked nine years in flavour science across industry and academia, including seven years at University College Cork. She returned to the Netherlands in 2005 to lead the Food Authenticity and Nutrients group at RIKILT Wageningen University & Research and later became professor in the Food Authenticity domain at both Wageningen University (2012) and Queen’s University Belfast (2018).
Since 2023, she has been based at University College Dublin. Prof. van Ruth has worked extensively with regulators, industry, farmers, and technology providers. She has published over 350 scientific papers, contributed to more than 30 teaching modules, supervised over 170 theses, coordinates the Horizon Europe initiative The European Food Fraud Community of Practice, and leads the EU Cluster for Food Integrity and Trust, comprising 21 European projects on authentic, healthy, safe, secure, and sustainable foods.
Summary
From Analytical Evidence to Trusted Foods
Food authenticity is fundamental to trust in our food system. Modern analytical approaches provide increasingly powerful tools to detect food fraud, while digitalisation of food supply chains offers new opportunities to improve traceability, transparency and data sharing. These approaches can reveal what has happened and help identify where vulnerabilities occur. Yet they primarily address the symptoms rather than the root causes of food fraud.
To prevent fraud effectively, we also need to understand why it happens and who makes it happen: the pressures, opportunities, motivations and decisions that drive perpetrators. This presentation explores how analytical evidence, digital technologies and behavioural insights can be brought together to move from detection towards prevention. It also introduces the European Food Fraud Community of Practice (EFF-CoP), which connects researchers, industry, regulators and other stakeholders to share knowledge, develop practical solutions and strengthen collective action towards more trusted foods.