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 January 2025 report has been published 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.
In FAN’s graphical analysis, 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.
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) or substandard meat quality/content in processed foods (what used to be termed “QUID”). Olive oil is the most adulterated specific product, including both substitution with other vegetable oils or mislabelling of Lampeter oil as EVOO. Document forgery is a current watch-out in the UK, and the EU cases include a forged Health Certificate.
