The latest EU Agri-Food Suspicions report, for April 2026, has been published here. As with previous months’ FAN have produced a rolling 3-month graphic to visualise the relative prevalence and trends in the main issues. These are regulatory reports from within the EU (as compared to the EU JRC monthly collation, which is based on global media reports) and are only suspicions. Due to the phasing lag in the EU publishing their reports, our own graphic always just misses the FAN monthly e-mail bulletin. However, one clear trend is that relative prevalences are remarkably consistent over time.
Trends and highlights from our analysis include.
- Despite species substitution having the highest public resonance, it accounts for a relatively low proportion of suspicions. Most are activities that have a low entry hurdle for potential criminals. The highest proportion of suspicions continue to relate to illegal trade – for example, unlicenced operators or attempting to evade import checks – and to falsified traceability documentation or certification.
- There appears a sustained gradual increase in cases relating to excess water in frozen seafood, fish, or chilled chicken (including analytical indicators such as excess polyphosphates).
- Suspicions can be raised as a result of mass balance checks – for example, in April, a number of cases where the volume of poultry despatched for transport did not match the volume delivered
- March saw a spike in undeclared sulphite preservative in dried fruit. It is possible that this was the consequence of a targeted sampling campaign.
- One interesting nugget: clementines that were judged to be falsely branded as “Portuguese” not on the basis of any written pack-copy, but on the basis of a picture.
FAN also produce a free annual aggregate of "most adulterated foods" from three of the commercial providers, which gives very high level smoothed data based on global official reports. Our 2025 summary can be found here.
Our interpretation of the Agrifood suspicion 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
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