Mitigating Food Fraud by incorporating a food-fraud system into an existing food-safety system

Food fraud is an intentional and financially-oriented act that can cause harm to consumers, public health, and the economy. Food fraudsters intentionally substitute, add, tamper with or misrepresent food, food ingredients or food packaging, for financial gain. False or misleading statements about a product are sometimes also used.

Customers are thereby tricked into paying premium prices for supposedly authentic products, which have in fact been tampered with. Food fraud can have negative effects on consumers’ health, and may even lead to public health risks.

Furthermore, food fraud has a large impact on the economy. While food fraudsters make a large amount of illegal profit from food fraud, the food industry is heavily impacted by huge economic losses. In fact, the full economic impact of food fraud is incalculable, but it is estimated to cost the food industry as much as $30-40 billion (R400-540 billion) a year.

Because food fraud has become so prevalent in the food industry, it is of great importance for individuals in the industry to consider establishing safety plans and systems that will help identify risks, and also to develop control plans to mitigate the risks for their businesses.

Many food-safety bodies have already set up requirements for mitigating food fraud risks – one example being the standards set by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) Issue 7. The BRC standards are constantly being expanded and updated, with developments for Issue 8 under way for publication in August 2018. These standards highlight the importance of taking measures to reduce food-fraud risks, and also offer a tool that can assess the vulnerability of food ingredients. The NSF organisation has now extended this tool to include more aspects of risk.

The vulnerability-assessment tool serves as the first step for food-business owners to identify risks, which will then aid these businesses in implementing safety systems that will help to reduce and prevent such risks. In addition to the tool, there are reliable databases that allow one to search for reported food-fraud cases by simply entering the food ingredients of interest. This can help food businesses to understand the history and vulnerability of such ingredients.

Food businesses should acknowledge the reality of food-fraud risks and take the necessary and easy step of utilising valuable tools such as the NSF vulnerability assessment tool, as well as the necessary databases, to identify their risks. The NSF and FACTS teams are working together to provide to the food industry both the NSF tool and assistance with collecting the incidents and inferences noted on the relevant databases for certain raw materials.

Once the risks to a business have been identified, it is then important to build a safety system that will mitigate such risks for the business. In doing so, the analysis of the food products or ingredients plays an important role. Different analysis methods are currently used in detecting food fraud. Some examples are microscopic analysis, isotopic analysis, ELISA, PCR, HPLC, and so on. At the moment, multi-targeted analysis methods are used predominantly, as there is often not a test for each incident. The FACTS team are able to advise on the best approach for food-fraud analysis requirements.

While it is important for food-business owners to identify, mitigate and prevent food-fraud risks, it is of utmost importance for professionals such as food scientists and food technologists to find innovative solutions and approaches to integrating food-fraud risks into existing food-safety systems. Using the NSF tool and guidance from the combined FACTS and NSF team will assist with achieving the goal of a sustainable and integrated food-safety system.