The issue of food crime has been recently highlighted by Andy Morling of the U. K. Food Standards Agency’s National Food Crime Unit. Morling indicates that food crime can occur at any part of the global food chain — from packing, flavoring, refrigeration, and storing. To add to this there is dishonest labeling, such as presenting a food as ‘organic’ when it is not, or something as ‘free range’ or ‘farmed.’
Related to this is adulteration, such as adding a lower quality ingredient to a higher quality one and marketing the complete product as a high quality one. An example is with an impure oil added to extra virgin olive oil.
The common types of food crime range from fraud, theft and high-level organised crime. Perhaps one reason why food crime is under-reported, Morling suggests, is because “there is no formal or legal definition of food crime.”
A recent case was the use of horsemeat in beef products, either added to or in replace of the intended meat. This scandal rocked many U.K. supermarkets when meat products, largely imported from Eastern Europe and labelled as ‘beef’ were in fact found to contain horsemeat. As well as the perpetrators themselves, the issue exposed a weakness in the supply chain of many U.K. supermarkets, especially in the failure to perform adequate quality checks. The incident came at a huge cost to the U.K. food industry, not just financially but also in terms of reputation
Few countries have constituted food crime units. The U.K. has recently pioneered the establishment of a unit focused on consumer protection. A new hotline allows people to report suspicions including:
That food or drink contains things which it shouldn’t
That methods used in your workplace for producing, processing, storing, labelling or transporting food do not seem quite right
That an item of food or drink says it is of a certain quality or from a specific place or region, but doesn’t appear to be.
The reason for establishing the unit was in the wake of the horsemeat incident. Other activities that the unit becomes involved with are gathering improved intelligence and sharing information to make it difficult for criminals to operate and instigating unannounced audit checks by the food industry to protect businesses and their customers. A further area is with improved laboratory testing.
