Study: Food Fraud Is On The Rise

Some food is good for you. Some food is bad for you. Then, some food isn't what you think it is. The latter can fall into the category of “food fraud.”

Researchers at Michigan State University say there are increasing cases of food being marketed to consumers as possessing some benefit it doesn't have. Or, in some cases, where potential harmful effects are obscured. It's almost always done for economic gain.

The Michigan State Study, published in the Journal of Food Science, said food fraud differs from a food safety incident involving unintentional act with unintentional harm, and a food defense incident characterized as a deliberate focus on intentional harm.

Intentional substitution

In an act of food fraud, the manufacturer or marketer engages in deliberate and intentional substitution, addition, tampering, or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients, or food packaging, or makes false or misleading statements made about a product for economic gain.

The study says examples that are potentially dangerous, including melamine added to milk to boost the apparent protein content,  salvaging dropped fruit that is bruised and subsequently contaminated with E. coli, and substituting less costly species of fish and misrepresenting them as more expensive species which may be toxic or cause allergic reactions.

“These types of food fraud ultimately pose risks to the consuming public,” the study authors write.

Increasing potential

As food products become more exotic and niche-oriented, the potential for food fraud increases. For example, how do you know that expensive sheep's milk cheese wasn't really made with cow's milk?

The Washington Post reports a Virginia man was convicted last year of selling 10 million pounds of cheap, frozen catfish fillets from Vietnam as much more expensive grouper, red snapper and flounder. He sold the fish to national chain retailers, wholesalers and food service companies, who passed it on to unsuspecting consumers.

The authors also write that food fraud could potentially be more dangerous than traditional food safety risks, since adulterants are typically unconventional and the current intervention and response systems are not looking for these contaminants.

The authors call for additional research on the risk associated with food fraud while also citing the need to support a continued public-private partnership approach to countering food fraud.