Food Fraud - New Dogs, Old Tricks

So it turns out I haven't wriiten a post in nearly a year..how time flies!

Ever since horsegate, I've developed a deep interest in food fraud. I've always enjoyed reading about crime and criminal motivations, so to combine this with the food history really gets my juices flowing, so I've decided to write a post about what food fraud entails; it's history, the types of fraud, the contemporary issue and motivations.

The definition of food fraud recognises the common theme of deliberately altering foodstuff for economic gain. However the effects can be categorised as being threefold: financial loss of the consumer, health risks and the adverse effect on the wider food economy such as confidence in legitimate businesses. In addition, food fraud is a collective term encompassing acts such as the deliberate addition, removal or substitution of ingredients or the misrepresentation on food packaging, labelling and statements.
In common language, consumers are entitled to receive what they pay for yet fraudsters are making a quick profit by counterfeiting legitimate goods and selling them on as genuine items or by producing genuine articles that have been adulterated with extraneous matter.

The History of Food Fraud
Food fraud drove some of the earliest laws; coffee in the eighteenth century was an expensive commodity and inaccessible to those less well off. In order to cheapen coffee, chicory, sand and dried leaf matter was blended in to bulk the product. It seems the tampering of foodstuffs was indeed such commonplace in antiquity times that consumers began to develop a taste and preference for cheaper, adulterated foods.  Today’s quality control measures are owed to German chemist Fredrich Accum who wrote a publication on A Treatise on Adulteration of Food and Culinary Poisons in 1820, after he identified that toxic metals were being used as colourings for food such as sweets and drink to become more appealing to children. This led to the creation of the Adulteration of Food Act in the UK in 1860 and 1872. It would have been difficult if not impossible to monitor and detect the adulteration of foodstuff in this era; limited knowledge and lack of investigative resources would be some of the difficulties authorities would encounter. Accum also publicly ‘named and shamed’ perpetrators who were convicted and who he felt lacked accountability and penalties. Arthur Hill Hassel is a notable significant individual who continued identifying and reporting fraudulent activity penalties. He had great success using basic resources such as microscopy to identify extraneous articles such as chicory in coffee. It is clear food fraud has been a long standing and undeterred problem with only methods of detection rather than preventative methods used against the problem in past times. The risk of food fraud would have been on a limited scale back then - it would have only affected a small geographical area compared to modern day complex supply chains.

The Contemporary Issue Surrounding Food Fraud
Advancements in science and detection along with greater public awareness, coverage and improved international cooperation have strengthened the fight against food fraud, but unfortunately so has the ingenuity of the fraudsters.

Food fraud incident types:

Term	Definition	Example	Potential public health threat that may lead to illness or death
Adulterate	A component of the finished product is fraudulent	Melamine added to milk	Fraudulent component
Tamper	Legitimate product and packaging are used in a fraudulent way	Changed expiry information, product up-labelling, so on	Fraudulent packaging information
Over-run	Legitimate product is made in excess of production agreements	Under-reporting of production	Fraudulent product is distributed outside of regulated or controlled supply chain
Theft	Legitimate product is stolen and passed off as legitimately procured	Stolen products are co-mitigated with legitimate products	Fraudulent product is distributed outside of regulated or controlled supply chain
Diversion	The sale or distribution of legitimate products outside of intended markets	Relief food redirected to markets where aid is not required	Shortages or delays of relief food to needy populations
Simulation	Illegitimate product is designed to look like but not exactly copy the legitimate product	“Knock-offs” of popular foods not produced with same food safety assurances	Fraudulent product of lesser quality
Counterfeit	All aspects of the original product and packaging are fully replicated	Copies of popular foods not produced with same food safety assurances	Fraudulent product

 
Understanding the Motives
The word ‘fraud’ conjures up images of hierarchical organised crime mobs such as Chinese triads, cartels and Sicilian Cosa Nostra Mafia. In fact, not all food fraud is illegal or a violation; it depends on ingredients used in the adulteration; the elements may not be seen as unethical in some cultures and unlike food terrorism, food fraudsters do not intend to cause a public health threat. Food fraud is opportunistic. Small and less sophisticated networks are capable of committing the act undetected in today’s long and complex supply chain. These networks may form, perpetrate the crime and then disband; returning to what may be a legitimate life. In the current economic climate there are increasing pressures on delivering cheap foods to consumers whilst maintaining a profit, so there is always an incentive to adulterate foods for the devious trader. So long as the demand is there for cheap food, fraudsters will provide it by any means.