4 Types of Food Fraud

From diluting premium ingredients with inferior alternatives to deliberately mislabelling products for economic gain, food fraud is an issue faced by economies around the world. In the EU alone, the European Commission estimates economically motivated food adulteration costs the economy around €8 to €12 billion every year. Not only does food fraud drain profits and damage the reputation of the industry, but it can be a major public health risk when toxic ingredients or unidentified allergens fly under the radar.

Defining food fraud

The Knowledge Centre for Food Fraud and Quality (KC-FFQ) operated by theEuropean Commissiondefines food fraud as the following:

“Any deliberate action of businesses or individuals to deceive others in regards to the integrity of food to gain undue advantage. Types of food fraud include but not limited to: adulteration, substitution, dilution, tampering, simulation, counterfeiting, and misrepresentation.”

下面，我们来仔细看看不同类型的食品欺诈。

• Dilution

High value ingredients are diluted with inferior alternatives. For example, 100% orange juice is diluted with water to increase yield and profits. This defies laws enforced by the European Commission, which state “nothing of lesser economic value must be added, or removed if it is of higher economic value”.

• Substitution

High value ingredients are replaced with inferior alternatives. This is common in theseafood industry，高价值的鱼种，如鳕鱼、大比目鱼、鲈鱼、鲷鱼、比目鱼和金枪鱼，经常被较便宜的替代品所取代。

This also meets the European Commission definition of food fraud, which states “if food is misdescribed, i.e. the information about origin, composition, etc provided to customers is not true and if this misdescription is done with the intention to deceive the customer for financial gain, food fraud - also known as economically motivated adulteration - is committed.”

• Concealment

暗地里的技术被用来掩盖原料或产品的低质量。例如，在质量检测期间，可以给家禽注射抗生素以掩盖疾病和减少细菌负荷。使用着色剂美化劣质水果和蔬菜的外观，是另一种隐瞒食品欺诈的例子。

• Mislabelling

Deliberately mislabelling products for financial gain is one of the most common examples of food fraud. The horse meat scandal of 2013 that saw products such as beef lasagne adulterated with horse meet and deliberately mislabelled, is an example of this type of food fraud.

These are just some examples of the types of food fraud faced by the industry. Foodomics, a discipline that uses advanced analytical techniques to profile samples and track crimes back to the source, plays a critical role in fighting food fraud. Find out more in‘A Complete Guide to Food Fraud & Foodomics’.