“Which foods are most adulterated”?

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.

2025

Headlines:

  • Food fraud reports published by global regulatory agencies from 2023 to 2025 show some evidence of an emerging upward trend.  Further data is required to see if this is a consistent and continuing trend
  • The activity associated with official food fraud and food safety reports remained fairly consistent across the four quarters of 2025.
  • The top three commodity classes accounting for the most food fraud reports varies depending on the source of reports and the tool used:
  • Using official reports only, Beverages’, ‘Processed foods’ and ‘Milk & diary products’.
  • Using official, media & peer reviewed publication reports, "Dairy" "Meat and Poultry" and "Herbs and Spices".
  • Labelling, use of non-food substance, dilution/ substitution and artificial enhancement fraud were the top four types of food fraud included in official reports

This report is the third annual report to be produced for this Partner project.

Platinum and Gold FAN Partners receive quarterly dashboard reports at the end of each quarter.

Please contact FAN, if you are interested in becoming a FAN Partner.

Read full report.

Summaries from previous years' reports is shown below, along with summary data from the FoodChainID database for 2021 and 2022

 

  • 2024
  • 2023
  • 2022
  • 2021

Headlines:

  • Food fraud reports published by global regulatory agencies during 2024 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 2024.
  • 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, Beverages’, ‘Processed foods’ and ‘Milk & diary products’.
  • Using official, media & peer reviewed publication reports, ‘Seafood’, ‘Honey’ and ‘Dairy’.
  • The number of official food fraud reports published, by an average of forty-seven sources, remains very low at only ~8% of food safety reports.
  • Botanical and animal origin fraud were the most reported type of food fraud in 2024, followed by use of non-food substance and dilution. Of these frauds, using non-food substances in food has the potential to do the most harm as seen in the Sudan dyes in chilli powder and melamine in infant formula incidents.