Development and Application of a Database of Food Ingredient Fraud and Economically Motivated Adulteration from 1980 to 2010

Food fraud is a growing problem and happens in many ways including mislabelling. Since lack of consumers’ knowledge about mandatory food labeling information and different types of food fraud may impact public health, the present work assesses consumers’ knowledge about these issues. Principal component analysis was performed to obtain a smaller number of uncorrelated factors regarding the usefulness and confidence of information displayed in food labels and the perception of food fraud. Results indicated that information displayed in food labels is useful, however the way it is presented may decrease consumer interest and understanding. Regarding respondents’ confidence in foodstuffs, over half of them stated that information provided in food labels is reliable. However, a lack of confidence about food composition is observed in those processed foodstuffs such as meat products. Food fraud is recognized by more than half of respondents with a higher perception of those practices that imply a risk to public health than those related to economic motivation. Age and education of consumers influenced the perception of the information displayed in the food labels, their confidence and knowledge about food fraud. Implementation of education programs to increase consumer knowledge about food labelling and fraud is essential. Respondents’ perception results could be use as guidelines by the food industry to improve food label design in order to enhance consumer understanding.

Food fraud is one of the long-standing causes of scandals attracting particular attention for a long time. This study aimed to monitor food fraud in the European Union and to identify the relationships among the countries where the cases were reported, adulterated commodities (seafood, eggs, milk, meat, fish, and their products) and types of fraud. The secondary data were covered by the survey focused on consumer knowledge about fraudulent activities, ingredient substitution, masking of origin, mislabeling, placing on the market of foods not fit for human consumption within Slovak inhabitants. Primary and secondary data were used to achieve this aim. Primary data were obtained from the Food Fraud and Quality Knowledge Center (KCFFQ) and secondary data from the questionnaire survey from 354 respondents. During the period from 2017 to 2019, 163 cases of food fraud were reported, most of which originated from Italy and mainly concerned fish and fish products. Based on primary data and one-way ANOVA statistical tests, we confirmed five hypotheses. There was found no statistical impact of the country on the type of food fraud (p = 0.0067), but the significant effect was determined on which food was adulterated (p = 0.000001). There was no statistical correlation among years and countries where the cases were reported (p = 0.110), but the statistically significant correlation was confirmed among years and commodities (p = 0.0043) and types of fraud reported (p = 0.009). Based on the processed secondary data from the questionnaire, we can conclude some information or public interest in food fraud problems.

A systematic review of consumer perceptions of food fraud and authenticity: A European perspective

This study aims to create a greater understanding of (1) existing unlawful food fraud activity, (2) food fraud vulnerabilities and (3) related network structures within the organic potatoes’, carrots’, and onions’ supply chains. Three types of methodology were applied to meet the aims: (1) an analysis of historical prevalence and patterns of food fraud in the organic sector in general and in the three selected organic chains, (2) a food fraud vulnerability analysis of supply chain actors of the three specific organic supply chains in the Netherlands, and (3) a social network analysis to identify structural characteristics of the three organic supply chains in the Netherlands. Incident analysis using the Decernis food fraud database revealed 201 incidents with organic foods between 2004 and 2021, 47 of which had a food safety component. Most targeted products were plant-based. Key products were fruits (42 cases), cereals and pulses (38 cases),spices/herbs/flavourings (20 cases), vegetables (19 cases), processed food products (14 cases: juice, oil,jam, infant food, tomato paste, wine, etc.), seeds (13 cases), and coconut products (12 cases). Only two organic potatoes’, one organic carrots’, and two organic onions’ incidents were identified in the database. Food fraud vulnerability assessments revealed that the vulnerabilities of the organic potatoes’, carrots’, and onions’ chains to food fraud were fairly like each other, at a low to moderate level. This level was comparableto the level of the previously examined organic bananas’ chains and less vulnerable than the previously examined organic olive oil, eggs’, and pork chains. This all aligns with the low frequency of fraud incidents in the three organic food chains in the Decernis food fraud database. Because of the similarity in food fraud vulnerability level of the three chains under investigation, one supply chain, the organic potato supply chain,was selected for social network analysis. This analysis revealed three distinctive groups among the actors in this supply chain: (A) a group with many contacts within the potato growers’ group, (B) a group with many contacts across all the organic potato supply chain nodes, and (C) a group with mainly contacts outside the chain. The actors of the three groups have distinctively different interactions and would, hence, also have potentially different roles in food fraud events. Socially key actors could also be identified. Although the foodfraud vulnerabilities in the Dutch organic potato supply chain are limited, the social network analysis provides very useful information for future work. Given that this is the first time such an approach has been taken in a national food fraud context, identification, and visualisation of key actors from a social networkpoint of view in this particular chain will be useful for comparison with other food supply chain networks in future research.

Africa is projected to have 2.4 billion people by 2050 and provision of healthy and nutritious diets is one of the challenges facing food systems. Food fraud is an act of deliberate adulteration and counterfeiting of food ingredients and commodities at all stages of supply chains with the aim of economic gain. Food fraud in Africa is a menace both in public health and for the economic development. Food fraud is perpetuated at all stages of the food supply chain to alter the quality of food products for economic gain or financial advantage thus threatening food safety. In addition, limited information is available on food fraud monitoring/manifestation in Africa thus hindering the prevention efforts. The standard bodies in sub-Saharan Africa countries play a vital role in combating food fraud. However, weak reporting mechanisms and regulatory systems in Africa remains a challenge in controlling food fraud. This current review explores food fraud in Africa and stakeholder (consumers, industries and regulators) challenges in the supply chain in attempt to combat food fraud. The recommendations of the review will be helpful to policymakers and scientists in improving the quality and safety of food along the supply chain, and in reducing fraud. Quality testing infrastructure and technical know-how are very important for frequent and rigorous quality control of food products and food fraud prevention. The standard and regulatory bodies in African governments need to strengthen and comply with the regulations that govern food fraud and support enforcement and food safety.

The ongoing challenges involved in identifying and tackling food fraud are vital to safeguarding the health of the general public. The new food labelling legislation introduced in December 2014 has generated much discussion in the media and has not been understood or supported in certain sectors of the food industry. And yet it provides a needed boost to the efforts to ensure responsible management of food products throughout the entire supply chain to avert risk of illness or even death for those who have food allergies.Food fraud is committed when food is deliberately placed on the market, for financial gain, with the intention of deceiving the consumer. The two main types of food fraud are the sale of food which is unfit and potentially harmful, and the deliberate mislabelling of food, such as products substituted with a cheaper alternative. Food fraud may also involve the sale of meat from animals that have been stolen and/or illegally slaughtered, as well as wild game animals such as deer that may have been poached.1The fish industry illustrates the international nature of the issue. In the United States, a Boston Globe study undertaken in 20112 suggested that as much as half of fish purchased in US restaurants is incorrectly labelled. This type of fish fraud generally consists of a restaurant or market selling one type of fish, but actually delivering another cheaper fish to the customer. For example, red snapper is often replaced with tilapia. Studies in various parts of the United States, including Massachusetts, Florida, and California, found up to 55% of fish purchased and DNA tested to have been mislabelled by the seller.Fish fraud is often intentional to increase profits. Other reasons are poor translations which are common with imported fish. Certain fish species also have more than one name, which can result in mislabelling. Fish names are also sometimes changed for marketing reasons: the toothfish, perhaps understandably, became more popular after an American fish seller in 1977 started calling it Chilean sea bass.In the United Kingdom, a case of food fraud resulted in a prosecution in 2012 when Michael Redhead, company director of Michael Redhead Associates Limited, was convicted of food fraud for deceiving Iceland Foods.3 This case highlights a number of key points in the supply chain where fraudulent activity can take place - a key point to remember with all food fraud and food adulteration cases is that a person can have an allergy to any food at all.The complexity of supply chain issues that impact on the clarity of labelling is demonstrated by this case. The samples, test purchased in April 2013, were identified as Japanese sea bass (Lateolabrax japonicus), a different species of fish to the sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) sold to UK consumers. The product was judged to be falsely described. The product was packed for Iceland Foods by fish processor Kirwin Brothers Ltd, of Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire. Michael Redhead Associates, based in Cumbria, provided a product, business development and sales service for Kirwin. The product was then launched in stores in June 2012.Redhead gave Iceland an email appearing to convey Cumbria Trading Standards' approval for the product to be labelled as 'sea bass'. The email had been altered by Mr Redhead for his own commercial gain; the product couldn't legally be called sea bass. …

Intrinsic value of food chain data

From the Chief Executive and <scp>IFST</scp> News

It is never an easy task to govern contemporary food systems and prevent contaminated foods from reaching further down the chains. This study aims to investigate how UK managers in food supply chains have perceived food fraud risk in their supply chain and to identify what their actions could be in response to the threat of food fraud. The study adopts the psychometric paradigm approach to measure risk perception and uses the data collected from 113 UK food practitioners to identify the determinants of their responsive actions. The results highlight that most managers have perceived high uncertainty in the food supply chain and considered the disruption of information flow as a major concern in dealing with food fraud. Therefore, this study suggests that putting effort into practices to improve supply chain visibility and facilitate the flow of information are weighted as important in the food fraud mitigation journey. Policy makers should also make better use of the current quality assurance schemes for proactive food quality control and fraud prevention; government agencies should improve the risk communication systems for trustworthy information dissemination.

Food fraud is generally referred to intentional behaviours to deceive consumers for financial gain. Food fraud during food production can harm the interests of consumers, pose potential safety risks, undermine consumer confidence in industry, and raise cultural and ethical concerns. Spice represents a category of food products that are highly vulnerable to food fraud. However, not all spices have received sufficient attention on the fraud issues. Food fraud in certain spices with relatively lower prices has long been overlooked. Nevertheless, low-priced spices are also those with larger trading volumes. Therefore, there is a need to reinforce the comprehension and detection of fraud in such low-priced, high-traded volume spices. In this thesis, we use ginger as the model to deepen the understanding of the underlying factors and mechanisms of food fraud in such spice products, as well as to enhance robust ginger authentication. The supply chain and business characteristics were identified through food fraud vulnerability assessments to deepen the understanding of underlying factors and mechanisms of food fraud in the ginger supply chain. In addition, the influence of ginger morphological and compositional variations generated during ginger powder processing on macroscopic and microscopic spectroscopy analysis was investigated to enhance the understanding and improve robust spectroscopy-based ginger authentication. By applying both theoretical and empirical food fraud vulnerability assessments, this thesis revealed the critical supply chain characteristics that influence fraud risks are raw material and final products of the supply chain, complexity of the supply chain, and historical evidence in the industry. In addition, the critical business characteristics are raw material and final products of the business, type of actors of the business, and geographical origin of the business. For the detection technology, the investigation on the influence of morphological variations on detection technique profiles revealed considerable impact of particle size on the profiles generated by macroscopic spectroscopy techniques, whereas marginal impact on the profiles generated by microscopic spectroscopy and spectrometry techniques. This thesis also indicated a considerable influence of other variables during ginger production, such as geographical origins, drying methods, etc. Ultimately, this thesis presents a systematic investigation into the underlying factors contributing to food fraud in the ginger supply chain, along with an in-depth analysis of product variations and their impact on spectroscopy- and spectrometry-based ginger authentication techniques. The results from this thesis lay the foundation for enhancing our understanding of food fraud in low-priced, high traded volume spices and advancing food fraud detection technologies.

Food fraud is a serious problem that may compromise the safety of the food products being sold on the market. Previous studies have shown that food fraud is associated with a large variety of food products and the fraud type may vary from deliberate changing of the food product (i.e. substitution, tampering, dilution etc.) to the manipulation of documents. It is therefore important that all actors within the food supply chain (food producers, authorities), have methodologies and tools available to detect fraudulent products at an early stage so that preventative measures can be taken. Several of such systems exist (i.e. iRASFF, EMA, HorizonScan, AAC-FF, MedISys-FF), but currently only MedISys-FF is publicly online available. In this study, we analyzed food fraud cases collected by MedISys-FF over a 6-year period (2015–2020) and show global trends and developments in food fraud activities. In the period investigated, the system has collected 4375 articles on food fraud incidents from 164 countries in 41 different languages. Fraud with meat and meat products were most frequently reported (27.7%), followed by milk and milk products (10.5%), cereal and bakery products (8.3%), and fish and fish products (7.7%). Most of the fraud was related to expiration date (58.3%) followed by tampering (22.2%) and mislabeling of country of origin (11.4%). Network analysis showed that the focus of the articles was on food products being frauded. The validity of MedISys-FF as an early warning system was demonstrated with COVID-19. The system has collected articles discussing potential food fraud risks due to the COVID-19 crisis. We therefore conclude that MedISys-FF is a very useful tool to detect early trends in food fraud and may be used by all actors in the food system to ensure safe, healthy, and authentic food.

Barcoding animal species

Food authenticity and fraud, as well as the interest in food traceability have become a topic of increasing interest not only for consumers but also for the research community and the food manufacturing industry. Food authenticity and fraud are becoming prevalent in both the food supply and value chains since ancient times where different issues (e.g., food spoilage during shipment and storage, mixing decay foods with fresh products) has resulted in foods that influence consumers health. The effect of climate change on the quality of food ingredients and products could also have the potential to influence food authenticity. However, this issue has not been considered. This article focused on the interactions between consumer health and the potential effects of climate change on food authenticity and fraud. The role of technology and development of risk management tools to mitigate these issues are also discussed. Where applicable papers that underline the links between the interactions of climate change, human health and food fraud were referenced.

Seafood fraud is commonly reported on food fraud databases and deceptive practices are highlighted by numerous studies, with impacts on the economy, health and marine conservation. Food fraud assessments are a widely accepted fraud mitigation and prevention activity undertaken to identify possible points of deception within a supply chain. This study aims to understand the food fraud vulnerability of post-harvest seafood supply chains in the UK and determine if there are differences according to commodity, supply chain node, business size and certification status. The SSAFE food fraud vulnerability assessment tool was used to assess 48 fraud factors relating to opportunities, motivations and controls. The analysis found seafood supply chains to have a medium vulnerability to food fraud, with the highest perceived vulnerability in technical opportunities. Certification status was a stronger determinant of vulnerability than any other factor, particularly in the level of controls, a factor that also indicated a higher perceived level of vulnerability in smaller companies and the food service industry. This paper also reviews historic food fraud trends in the sector to provide additional insights and the analysis indicates that certain areas of the supply chain, including uncertified prawn supply chains, salmon supply chains and food service companies, may be at higher risk of food fraud. This study conducts an in-depth examination of food fraud vulnerability relating to the UK and for seafood supply chains and contributes to a growing body of literature identifying areas of vulnerability and resilience to food related criminality within the global food system.

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