This is a question that the Food Authenticity Network (FAN) is frequently asked, so we are delighted to be collaborating with the providers of three leading commercial food fraud incident collation tools (FoodChain ID Food Fraud Database, HorizonScan and Safety Hud) for delivery of this Partner project.

Collaborating with all three organisations, has enabled FAN to provide a more robust / representative view on global food fraud reports. All three organisations contributed data ‘in kind’ to this project.

Platinum and Gold FAN Partners receive a Quarterly dashboard of global food fraud reports. For further information, contact us on Secretary@foodauthenticity.global.

Headlines:

• Food fraud reports published by global regulatory agencies during 2023 do not provide evidence of a consistent, significant trend during 2023.
• The activity associated with official food fraud and food safety reports remained fairly consistent across the four quarters of 2023.
• The top three commodities with the most food fraud reports varies depending on the source of reports and the tool used:
• Using official reports only, ‘Fruit, vegetables & legumes’, ‘Milk & diary products’ and ‘Beverages’ are the top three.   
• Using official, media & peer reviewed publication reports, ‘Honey’, ‘Herbs & Spices’ and ‘Meat & Poultry’ are the top three.
• The number of official food fraud reports published, by an average of thirty-six sources, is very low at only ~9% of food safety reports.
• Botanical origin fraud was the most reported type of food fraud in 2023, followed by dilution or substitution, and animal origin fraud.

Read full report.

Foods most reported as being fraudulent, based on data from the FoodChain ID Food Fraud Database, is posted on an annual basis.

The data for 2022, 2021 and a rolling ten years is presented.