Here is our latest monthly graphic from the EC Reports of Agri-Food Fraud Suspicions, showing a rolling 3-month trend.
Our interpretation of the reports is subjective. In order to show consistent trends we have excluded cases which appear to be unauthorised sale but with no intent to mislead consumers (e.g. unapproved food additives, novel foods which are declared on pack), we have excluded unauthorised health claims on supplements, and we have excluded residues and contaminants above legal limits. We have grouped the remaining incidents into crude categories. Our analysis is intended only to give a high-level overview.
The highest proportion of fraud continues to relate to falsified or unlicenced trade in high risk food (illegal operators, missing or falsified health certificates, attempts at illegal import) and relating to falsified or missing traceability documentation. Beyond this, there has been a steady increase in examples of foods labelled as "preservative free" being found to contain preservatives. There are also consistent - and high - numbers of the simple fraud of food being under the declared pack weight. A high proportion of these cases are due to excessive water glaze on frozen seafood.
A small - but increasing - proportion of the cases of non-meat/fish products being low in a premium component relate to "nutraceuticals"; foods marketed on the basis of an ingredient or additive with a real or implied health benefit, and the ingredient/additive being at a lower quantity than declared. For those formulating such products, it is a reminder that there is no "under-tolerance" in the enforcement guidelines for declared amounts of such ingredients (including vitamins and minerals) and that the declared quantity must remain valid throughout the shelf life.
These Agri-Food suspicions are just one of the incident databases available. Different databases collect different information, in different ways, and therefore show a different angle on the true picture. All of these sources are signposted on FAN. Best practice is to use a combination of multiple sources.
- JRC – These are solely media reports. They exclude cases not in the public domain, and can be biased by shocking but highly localised incidents in local food supply within poorly regulated countries. They now incorporate a search and trending tool to produce graphs and charts
- EU Agri-Food Suspicions – These are solely EU Official Reports, and only suspicions. The root cause of each incident is unknown. The data include pesticide residues above their MRLs. unapproved supplements and novel foods, and unapproved health claims.
- Food Industry Intelligence Network Fiin SME Hub – These are aggregated anonymised results from the testing programmes of large (mainly UK) food companies. The testing programmes are targeted and risk-based, not randomised, and the fraud risks within such suppliers of large BRC-certified retailers and manufacturers may be different than the companies supplying small manufacturing businesses or hospitality firms.
Many testing laboratories also supply their own customers with incident collations, and there are many commercial software systems that scrape reports from the internet. All collect and treat the data slightly differently. FAN produce a free annual aggregate of "most adulterated foods" from three of the commercial providers, which gives very high level smoothed data based on official reports.
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