News

This article (open access) discusses some of the current challenges in testing animal feed for compliance with European legislation using microscopy (one of the official methods mandated by the legislation).

Although the article is pre-publication and not peer-reviewed, it is generously illustrated with colour photographs of microscope slides - such as that shown here - which could be a valuable training aide to Official Control analysts who are relatively new to microscopy.  The author discusses key areas where expert interpretation is needed, describing the examples of bovine spray-dried plasma protein (legal, within restrictions, in the US but banned in the EU in ruminant feed), differentiating milk powder from blood powder, and differentiating hydrolysed proteins from vegetable vs animal sources.

Here is our regular monthly graphic from the EC Reports of Agri-Food Fraud Suspicions, showing a rolling 3-month trend.  These EU reports are a useful tool for estimating fraud incidents, signposted on FAN’s Reports page.  They can be found here.

Our graphical analysis contains some subjectivity in the interpretation of the report data. In order to show consistent trends we have excluded cases which appear to be unauthorised sale but no intent to mislead consumers of the content/ingredients of a food pack (e.g. unapproved food additives, novel foods), 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 absolute count of incidents are creeping up a little but are generally fairly steady.  The split of incidents between different categorisations is also fairly consistent over time, with a significant number relating 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.

Another consistent theme is underweight premium ingredient content in processed food, generally (but not always) the meat or seafood content.  Often this is associated with excess glaze or water in frozen food. 

Although we do not count unapproved (but declared on-pack) additives in these graphs, it is noteworthy that there has been a consistent rise in recent months in the number of regulatory siezures of food (often confectionary) imported into the EU that contains titanium dioxide (an additive permitted in many regions of the world, but now banned in the EU).  This increased enforcement activity may account for some of the general insight reports, based on analysis ot EU Agri-Food Suspicions, that "food fraud incidents are increasing". 

The EC Monthly reports are only one source of information.  A comparison of the many different information sources now available, and the complementary insight that can be gained from using a variety of information sources, is given in an earlier blog this year.

The European Union has 13 flagship projects designed to tackle critical challenges in food safety, traceability and combatting fraud.  They are all under the funding umbrella of the Horizon R&D programme. FAN members will be familiar with the European Food Fraud Community of Practice (EFF-CoP) but this is just one project within the cluster.

All of the projects in the cluster are now indexed on the website of THEROS, one of the first of the projects to be launched.  The index includes project summaries and links.

• THEROS - An integrated toolbox for improved verification and prevention of adulterations and non-compliances in organic and geographical indications food supply chain
• EFF-CoP – the European Food Fraud Community of Practice
• Alliance – digital solutions for data veracity and transparency in food supply chaines
• CUES – consumers’ understanding of eating sustainably
• FishEUTrust - Increasing consumer trust and engagement in seafood products
• Sea2See - Blockchain traceability technology and stakeholders’ engagement strategy for boosting sustainable seafood consumption
• TealHelix – Inclusive and personalised food labelling
• Watson – digital and technical track-and-trace solutions, predominantly aimed to defend against counterfeiting
• Titan - Enabling transparency in food supply chains by implementing innovative solutions to boost health, sustainability, and food safety
• FOODGUARD - Microbiome applications and technological hubs as solutions to minimize food loss and waste
• ROSETTA - Reducing food waste due to marketing standards through alternative market access
• INfoodMATION - Optimising food information and communication towards healthier and more sustainable dietary patterns
• DRG4FOOD - Developing a European roadmap and a practical toolbox to guide policymakers, businesses, and civil society in designing food systems

The EC Monthly Reports of Agri-Food Fraud Suspicions reports are a useful tool for estimating fraud incidents, signposted on FAN’s Reports page.  The February 2025 report can be found here.

As with all incident collation reports, interpretation must be drawn with care.  The EC collation is drawn from the iRASSF system – these are not confirmed as fraud, and the root cause of each issue is usually not public.  There are important differences in the data sources, and thus the interpretation that can be drawn, of these data compared to other incident collations.  For example:

• JRC Monthly Food Fraud Summaries (which underpin the infographics produced monthly by FAN member Bruno Sechet) - these are unverified media reports, rather than official reports, but hugely valuable in giving an idea of which way the fraud winds are blowing
• Official reports (as collated from commercial databases such as Fera Horizonscan or Merieux Safety Hud, which underpin FAN's annual Most Adulterated Foods aggregation) - these are fewer in number and give a much more conservative estimate of fraud incidence, and may miss some aspects which have not been officially reported
• Verified reports (where the root cause has been scrutinised and interpreted by a human analyst, for example the FoodChainID commercial database) - these are also few in number, less suitable for drawing overall trends, but give specific insight and information.

If looking at trends over time, you must also be wary of step-changes due to new data sources.  For example, Turkey's public "name-and-shame" database of foods subject to local authority sanctions went online in January 2025 and has had a big impact on the data captured by all commercial incident databases.

In FAN’s graphical analysis of the Agri-Food Fraud Suspicions, shown here, we have excluded cases which appear to be unauthorised sale but no intent to mislead consumers of the content/ingredients of a food pack (e.g. unapproved food additives, novel foods), excluded unauthorised health claims on supplements, and we have excluded residues and contaminants above legal limits.  Our analysis is subjective but intended to give a high-level overview.

We have grouped the remaining cases into crude categories.  It can be seen that the majority are either unregistered trade (e.g. illegal import, or unlicenced premises), falsified certification or traceability records, or substandard meat quality/content in processed foods (what used to be termed “QUID”).  It can be useful to compare a series of consecutive months to see if there is any evidence for materialisation of frauds flagged as risks by supply-and-demand pressures (e.g. the recent increase in cocoa prices).  So far, we only have two months of analysis but we will continue to publish these trends over the year..

A reminder that the EU now publishes a monthly collation of "Agri-Food Fraud Suspicions".  A permanent link to these is also within FAN's Food Fraud Prevention reports listing. Such reports are a valuable aid to vulnerability assessment updates and reviews.

One example within the detail of September's "Suspicions" report is the potential for cause-and-effect between food safety risks and subsequent fraud risks.  Historically, the fumigant ethylene oxice (ETO) has been used to control salmonella risk in shipments of dry seeds/powder ingredients and additives, including xanthan gum.  With the EU ban on ETO, there have been recent RASFFs for residues of ETO in xantham gum.  The impact of the ban on salmonella risk is unclear.  We are now seeing cases of faked health certificates for xanthan gum.

The European Commission published today the results of the first coordinated control plan on the authenticity of herbs and spices launched by the Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety.

It has been carried out by 21 EU Member States, Switzerland and Norway, with the technical support of the Joint Research Centre, which performed nearly 10,000 analyses. The plan is the largest investigation so far into the authenticity of culinary herbs and spices in terms of participating countries and samples analysed (1885).

The main conclusions were as follows: 

• The overall rate of suspicious samples was 17% (323 of a total of 1885 analysed samples), which is less than what was previously reported in the scientific literature or by national food control institutions.
• The oregano supply chain was most vulnerable as 48% of samples were suspicious of being adulterated, in most cases with olive leaves.
• The percentage of samples which were suspicious of adulteration were 17% for pepper, 14% for cumin, 11% for curcuma, and 11% for saffron.
• The lowest suspicion rate (6%) was found for paprika/chilli.
• The majority of suspicious samples contained non-declared plant material; in 2% of the analysed spice samples non-authorised dyes were detected. One sample contained a high level of lead chromate.
• In two cumin, 45 oregano, and four pepper samples copper compounds above the relevant maximum residue limit set by Regulation (EC) No 396/2005 were found.
• No specific trend regarding the rate of potential fraudulent manipulations along the supply chain (countries of origin/importers/wholesalers/processors/packagers) could be observed. However, for certain stages (domestic production, local markets, border control, and internet) the number of samples tested was too low to enable statistically meaningful comparisons.

Read full report.

The anticipated failure of many countries to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 necessitates the assessment of science–policy engagement mechanisms for food systems transformation. 

A High Level Expert Group (EG) of the European Commission explore options for enhancing existing partnerships, mandates and resources — or reimagining a new mission — for science–policy interfaces in this paper.

The science policy interfaces (SPI) options presented in this paper provide a potential framework to promote consensus around ways to achieve independent scientific interaction with policy needs at different scales. Establishing more effective food systems SPIs will require financial and political capital and time-defined dialogues that go beyond cooperation among existing SPIs to include other actors (including national and regional governments, the private sector and NGOs). These dialogues should be shaped by openness, inclusivity, transparency, scientific independence and institutional legitimacy.

The UN Food Systems Summit held in September 2021 provided some space for this discussion, which should be furthered during the UN Climate Change Conference in the UK (COP26) and Nutrition for Growth in Tokyo. The global community must seize on this historic moment to formulate commitments that enhance SPIs and that concretely help them to support the urgently needed transformation of our food systems.

Read full paper.

The European Council has adopted conclusions on further steps to improve ways of tackling and deterring fraudulent practices in the agro-food chain.

In its conclusions the Council recalls that a high level of protection is an overall objective of EU policies concerning health, safety, environmental protection and consumer protection, and recognises that the current EU legal framework on tackling food fraud is adequate.

The Council nonetheless emphasises the need for continuous and improved cross-sectorial cooperation to fight against food fraud. This cooperation should include not only food and feed control authorities, but also authorities involved in the fight against financial crime and tax, customs, police, prosecution and other law enforcement authorities. In relation to this, the Council calls upon the Commission and member states to allocate adequate resources to ensure effective implementation of existing EU legislation by improving the shared understanding of the criteria determining food fraud.

The Council also stresses the need to promote awareness-raising among consumers and to continue to broaden training on countering food-fraud.

Read text of conclusions.text of conclusions

According to the first EU-wide intellectual property crime threat assessment from Europol and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), most criminal activity involving counterfeiting is carried out by increasingly professionalised organised crime networks, which can reap large profits while running relatively few risks.

Food and drinks remain highly popular items for counterfeiters, with the EU consistently emerging as a major destination market for counterfeit food and drinks. Detected counterfeit food products include baby milk powder, stock cubes, cheese, coffee, olive oil and pasta. Several of these goods have been found in groceries and supermarkets, illustrating that they also infiltrate the legal supply chain. As the counterfeit goods are almost always of substandard quality and produced in unhygienic environments, they can pose a serious risk to the health and wellbeing of consumers. In some cases, counterfeit food has even been found to contain dangerous or hazardous ingredients. Law enforcement authorities regularly detect other types of counterfeit goods alongside counterfeit food and drinks, highlighting how organised crime groups are frequently involved in trading an ever wider range of different counterfeit goods. In general, there appears to be an overall professionalisation of the organised crime groups involved in food counterfeiting.

Besides food, counterfeit alcoholic beverages pose a considerable risk to EU consumers. Spirits and wine are especially popular goods targeted for counterfeiting by organised crime groups. They frequently place cheap wine in bottles containing fake expensive wine labels, sometimes even adding pure alcohol on counterfeit spirits. Production methods have become increasingly sophisticated in recent years, with some organised crime groups operating their own production lines, including the packaging and labelling of the product. Another method is to use legitimate production lines one day a week or month for the production of counterfeits.

Read the full report.