Learn how to recognize food fraud and protect yourself from deceptive practices. Spotting red flags and taking proactive steps can help ensure you consume safe and authentic food products.
Food fraud , we talk about it because it is increasingly common to hear or read news about illegal activities in the sale of food products.
Unfortunately, even the organic products sector is not exempt from the activities of unscrupulous companies that exploit the advantages of a growing market , to the detriment of the health of their customers.
What is food fraud?
Food fraud is essentially a form of deception to the detriment of consumers and authorities. According to the most recent legal guidelines, in relation to the production and sale of food products, it is usual to distinguish between two forms of food fraud: health fraud and commercial fraud.
Food Fraud: Health Fraud and Commercial Fraud
Food fraud can be of a commercial or health nature (or both):
- The first, health frauds can have health consequences as they may contain degradation products, exogenous chemicals or potentially harmful microbial contaminants.
- Commercial frauds cause economic damage because they sell food of lower commercial value than the real one. Let’s look at them in more detail.
Health fraud
When we talk about health fraud, the assumption is that of the probability/certainty of making food potentially or certainly harmful, thus threatening public health. They can be committed through the simple possession or marketing of food products that are dangerous to public health even if they have not yet been sold.
Commercial Fraud
Commercial fraud, on the other hand, includes all fraudulent actions on food or its packaging which, while not causing any concrete or immediate harm to public health , favour illicit profits to the detriment of the consumer.
Commercial frauds violate the contractual and patrimonial rights of the consumer and are configured whenever there is “delivery to the buyer of one thing for another, or different from that declared or agreed in terms of origin, provenance, quality or quantity”. It is emphasized that it is not necessary to modify the food itself nor is it necessary for the food to be harmful, a minimal difference in the product from what was agreed or declared is enough . The two types of fraud, commercial and health , cannot always be precisely classified, as in most cases the two phenomena coexist.
Adulteration, sophistication, counterfeiting, alteration … in essence, food fraud includes various illicit conduct aimed at illicit gain, which also significantly reduce production costs and worsen the quality of the food product sold, in many cases to the detriment of our health.
The importance of correct information
Therefore, it is important to be informed , to try to understand the ethics that guide a company and not to be misled by advertising messages, to read the labels and, even if food technology uses very sophisticated techniques, to know the products well and learn to recognize their naturalness. Let’s see in detail what the various terms we read or hear about mean.
Let’s see what are the different types of fraud possible in the food sector.
Types of food fraud
The adulteration
Adulteration is a fraud that includes all operations that alter the original structure and analytical composition of a food by replacing elements of the food itself with other foreign ones, or by adding or subtracting an element, or by increasing the proportional quantities of one or more of its components, leaving them with their original appearance. Adulterations certainly have commercial implications but potentially also hygienic-nutritional ones.
Example of adulteration
Selling skimmed milk labeled as whole milk , replacing ethyl alcohol with methanol to increase its alcohol content, producing cheese using by-products,
Classic adulterations are the addition of water to milk or wine or the addition of seed oil to olive oil to sell it on the market as 100% pure olive oil.
The sophistication
Adulteration is a fraud that consists in adding foreign substances to food, usually of poor quality, that alter its original natural composition, simulating its genuineness with the aim of improving
its appearance or covering defects. Usually the addition of unauthorized chemical substances improves and masks the colors or flavors of foods.
Examples of sophistication
Adding sulfur dioxide to ground beef to make it red, adding food coloring to pasta to make it look like egg pasta, adding benzoyl peroxide to mozzarella to make it whiter.
The counterfeiting
Counterfeiting consists in replacing a product with another of different composition and of lesser value. That is, in forming an apparently genuine food with substances different from those of which it is normally composed.
Examples of counterfeiting
Put a seed oil on sale under the name of olive oil, brand a common cheese with the symbol of a product with a controlled designation of origin, sell a cheese made from cow’s milk as sheep’s cheese.
The alteration (deterioration)
Alteration consists of a series of phenomena, usually accidental or caused by negligence, that can affect almost all foods and that modify their composition and organoleptic characteristics. Such foods can thus become unfit for consumption or even dangerous. In essence, we speak of adulteration when products that have nevertheless undergone modifications in their components or nutrients are put on sale as regular.
Example of alteration
The typical example of alteration is the sale of “spoiled” food by modifying the expiration date on the label, or the remediation of moldy or deteriorated products and putting them on sale as fresh