Food fraud is big business. Costs to the global food industry range from $30bn to $50bn annually, and an estimated cost to consumers, businesses and government in the UK of between £410m and £1.96bn per year. Every consumer has the right to buy food that is authentic and it is essential that they can be confident they are eating food that, in the words of the UK Food Safety Act (1990), is “of the nature or substance or quality demanded”.
This article explores the issue of food fraud and what can be done to protect food business operators from the criminals who carry out this illegal practice for financial gain.
What is food fraud?
Codex, in its Draft Guidelines on the Prevention and Control of Food Fraud (2024), defines food fraud as “Any deliberate practice intended to deceive others in regard to the characteristics of food to gain an unfair economic advantage”. In Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/1715 the European Union defines food fraud in a notification as “a non-compliance concerning any suspected intentional action by businesses or individuals, for the purpose of deceiving purchasers and gaining undue advantage therefrom”. The United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) refers to economically motivated adulteration (EMA) and describes it as “when someone intentionally leaves out, takes out, or substitutes a valuable ingredient or part of a food [or] adds a substance to a food to make it appear better or of greater value”.
The UK National Food Crime Unit (NFCU) details types criminal behaviour, of which four predominate in food fraud:
1 Adulteration - substances are added to a food to lower the costs or fake higher quality such as adding water to fruit juice or Sudan I dye to spices.
2 Substitution - replacing a food or ingredient with something similar or inferior such as replacing beef with horsemeat or extra virgin olive oil with vegetable oil.
3 Misrepresentation - a food is marketed or labelled in a way that falsely portrays its quality, safety, origin or freshness. This includes making claims about a product being organic, free range, Halal or Kosher or made in a country (e.g. made in France) when it is imported from overseas.
4 Waste diversion - foods not intended for human consumption are diverted into the legitimate food chain, for example animal by-products.
There are helpful online videos that provide an introduction to food fraud including from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UN FAO) and the European Commission (EC). Those wishing to delve beyond this and into further detail can find material online provided by the EU Agri-Food Network, the UK FSA and the US FDA.
The history of food fraud
You might be tempted to think that food fraud is a modern phenomenon, driven by globalisation of food supply and pressures in the food system. Clearly, these factors provide incentives for this to perpetuate but fraud has been a feature of food trading throughout history with records dating back to Roman times (AD 23-79). Early examples of adulteration include pepper adulterated with Juniper berries and the industrial use of smoke and noxious herbs and drugs in wines.
The period widely recognised as being the heyday for food adulteration was the 1800s where pioneers in fighting food fraud, the analytical chemists Frederick Accum and A. H. Hassall, regularly published articles exposing their findings. They uncovered formaldehyde in milk, red lead in cayenne pepper, copper in pickles and mercury and lead in cheese. You can read more in Accum’s text published in 1820 called a Treatise on Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons and Hassall’s book on Food and its Adulterations.
Although food fraud is often a matter that goes unnoticed due to the obvious intention of the fraudster to seek financial gain without being detected, there have been some devasting public health incidents over the years involving high mortality and morbidity:
- The Bradford sweet poisoning in 1858 resulted in over 200 cases of illness and 21 deaths when a confectioner used white arsenic to bulk out the sugar instead of gypsum.
- The Manchester beer poisonings of 1900 (6,000 ill and over 70 deaths) was also due to arsenic in beer from contaminated brewer’s sugar.
- The Spanish toxic oil syndrome in 1981 resulted in up to 20,000 illnesses and 300 deaths. The olive oil was adulterated using rapeseed oils (allegedly for industrial use) denatured with 2% aniline and then refined to remove the aniline.
- The Chinese milk fraud in 2008 was due to adulteration with melamine to restore the apparent protein content after diluting the milk with water. The fraud affected up to 300,000 people and caused six deaths.
Of course there have also been some food fraud incidents that have not caused major human health issues such as Sudan I contamination of spice (chilli) in Worcester sauce that resulted in the recall of over 350 processed food products in the UK and the Horsemeat Scandal in 2013 where beef was substituted with horsemeat.
Notwithstanding the fact that we have had centuries to try and manage the risk of food fraud, it is clear from official reports that the practice remains rife in the global food supply chain. The EU Alert and Cooperation Network (ACN) reported 294 agri-food fraud notifications in 2025. The reasons for alerts were:
- implicit claims violations (121)
- product tampering (80)
- record tampering (69)
- non-compliances related to plant protection products (12)
- non-compliances related to animal health (7).
The ACN publishes a Monthly Report on EU Agri-Food Fraud Suspicions and in April 2026 alone there were 188 suspicions from 859 iRASFF (Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed) notifications. The categories of foods with the highest suspicions included dietetic foods, food supplements and fortified foods, fruits and vegetables, confectionery and meat and meat products (other than poultry). Specific examples include multiple foods with illegal health or nutrition claims, olive oil adulterated with vegetable oil, prawns with excess added water, ground chilli with Sudan I and salami with the wrong meat species. Recent prosecutions of perpetrators of food fraud clearly reinforces the need for constant vigilance in this area.
Regulation and guidance
Legislation and guidance in relation to the authenticity of food has evolved over many years and dates back centuries. References exist in Deuteronomy 23:13 to the need for standard weights and measures and early examples of legislation can be seen in the Assize of Bread, proclaimed by King John of England in 1202.
Modern regulation and enforcement to protect consumers from food fraud is a fundamental component of legislation in all countries (EU, UK) but it is the responsibility of food businesses to ensure their own operations and supply networks are effectively managed to reduce the risk. There are a number of industry tools and guides available to support identifying and mitigating food fraud risk and a comprehensive list is available from the Food Authenticity Network (FAN). The Food and Drink Federation also provides an excellent free Food Authenticity Guide.
Preventing food fraud requires a systematic approach to identifying threats, vulnerabilities and mitigations. The principles embodied in hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) to address accidental or unintentional hazards have been adapted to create tools to address intentional criminal activity (food crime) and economically motivated adulteration (food fraud). This includes tools such as threat assessment and critical control point (TACCP) and vulnerability assessment and critical control point (VACCP). Traditionally TACCP and VACCP were promoted as separate exercises for sabotage and fraud respectively, but it is generally considered more practical to combine them when developing a food defence plan that enables a business to identify and mitigate risks of all types of food crime.
Considerations in relation to the application of these tools have been summarised in a recent article on food defence published by BRCGS. One of the most comprehensive guides in this area is the recently updated Publicly Available Standard 96 (PAS 96:2026) Food defence – Protection and prevention from deliberate acts – guide. PAS 96 focuses on identifying and mitigating deliberate threats, with TACCP methodology and vulnerability assessment at its core, through a continuous ‘plan, do, check, act’ (PDCA) cycle.
The UK FSA has produced a free online food fraud resilience self-assessment tool to support businesses in evaluating awareness and resilience to food crime that also provides areas for potential improvement. Training is also a key element in developing capability to combat food fraud and organisations such as BRCGS offer comprehensive training modules to support the in-depth and practical understanding of tools and techniques for vulnerability assessment for food fraud and how they can be applied in a practical manner. Campden BRI also offers foundation and intermediate training in food defence and food fraud together with a free guide to beating food crime.
Assurance
Analytical testing together with third party certificated audits are an integral part of assurance programmes operated by food business to mitigate food fraud risks. Specialist analytical techniques are often needed for food fraud and the use of accredited laboratories is essential. Technology such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and enzyme linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) are widely employed for verifying authenticity such as speciation e.g. beef, chicken, buffalo mozzarella, basmati rice. The tests may also be used to check for adulteration e.g. substitution of beef with horsemeat, cod with generic whitefish.
Isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IP MS) is used to verify the geographic origin of products such as egg, meat and fish by comparing the isotope ratios of certain chemicals with verified databases. It can also give indications of organic status. Mass spectrometry and the various spectroscopy techniques (near infra-red (NIR), Fourier transform infra-red (FTIR) and Infra-red) are used for a range of adulteration and authenticity purposes. The Institute of Food Science and Technology has an excellent and detailed review of analytical testing for food fraud available to members and free guides are available from other organisations.
Third-party certificated audits are used extensively to provide assurance about the integrity of the food supply network. This includes programmes for food safety management such as BRCGS Global Standard Food Safety, Packaging Materials, etc., as well as those for specific farming systems including organic and free range, or for special dietary purposes (e.g. gluten-free, vegan, Halal, Kosher). The BRCGS Global Standard Food Safety specifies that “systems shall be in place to minimise the risk of purchasing fraudulent or adulterated food raw materials and to ensure that all product descriptions and claims are legal, accurate and verified”. This includes undertaking vulnerability assessments and analytical testing.
The NFCU highlights document fraud as an emerging issue in the food industry. This type of fraud can include forged certificates of analysis or the faked certification of a business. With such extensive use of analytical testing and third-party certification in assurance processes, a concerning trend has been certificate fraud where analytical test certificates and audit reports or certificates are either completely fake or have had certain information manipulated.
With document fraud, ingredients or products may be falsely claimed as being free from certain contaminants (e.g. chemicals, allergens or pathogenic micro-organisms) when they had not been tested or when they were found to contain them but are then falsely described. Similarly, certification may be issued about a facility that has not be audited or where the audit failed. The FSA provides some useful tips in managing risks in these areas and the BRCGS Directory now has specific features that allow businesses to receive the certification status of suppliers in their network direct from the authorised directory user, thus avoiding the potential to receive falsified reports or certificates through email chains.
What is clear is that food fraud is, and always will be, a feature of the food supply network that requires active management of the associated risks.
I hope that this has given you some useful insight into the area and look out for the next edition.
All the best
Alec
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AuthorAlec Kyriakides Independent Food Safety Consultant
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