Do You Want Lies with that? Fighting Food Fraud

A growing influx of counterfeit food products is causing a stir and driving new interest in detection technology. This report looks at a range of new technologies that can help to identify fake produce.


The impact of food fraud - a term generally describing the deliberate substitution, addition and misrepresentation of food, food ingredients or packaging - is on the rise. According to AT Kearney, the counterfeiting of global food and consumer products is costing the industry $10bn to $15bn each year - and the impact is not just economical, food fraud also poses a very real threat to public health.

The growing trend of food fraud

John Spink, associate director of Michigan State University's A-CAPPP, the first academic body to focus on the complex global issues of anti-counterfeiting and product protection, estimates that 5%-7% of the food supply is fraudulently labelled.

"An overwhelming set of incidents and case studies indicates that food fraud is a growing trend," says Spink. "Globalisation, consolidation of manufacturing, urbanisation, and other large-scale trends may provide insights to why food fraud is growing - globalisation requires more diverse and longer food supply chains to meet the demands of growing urban populations."

With counterfeit food on the increase, what are the best ways to counteract such a problem? Spink believes that a multidisciplinary approach is required. "Some of the useful disciplines, beyond food science, include criminology, supply chain management and packaging. Each of these disciplines provides insights for understanding the nature of food fraud and contributes proactive solutions to reduce it."

When it comes to methods to detect the authenticity of food, there is plenty of technology, but technology alone may not be enough to solve the problem. According to Spink, "there is no shortage of technologies. What is in demand is to further strategise how multilayer, multitechnology approaches deter bad guys.

"There is a danger of relying too much on one technology, such as for anti-counterfeiting, then the bad guys shift to stealing and reselling genuine product." He does, however, believe that recent handheld, immediate authentication technologies are an 'important piece of the detection and deterrence equation'.

To read the rest of this story go to Food Processing Technology.