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Food Fraud Is A Serious Issue

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1. Introduction Food fraud is a serious issue which has come under increased scrutiny as a potential food safety and public health concern in recent years (Spink and Moyer 2011). Regulators, food producers, retailers, and consumers all have an interest in safeguarding foods and ensuring they are safe, genuine, and of the highest quality. Nevertheless, food fraud has been conducted since ancient times, with evidence of laws dating back to Roman times regarding the adulteration of wine, through the addition of sweeteners and coloring agents, or dilution with water. At that time the scale of fraud was much more limited to a smaller geographical region (Armstrong 2009; Spink and Moyer 2011). Because of the growth and increasing complexity of the modern global food supply systems, this has substantially heightened the risk of food fraud to include an entire global population, therefore having a major impact on the ability to protect consumer health (Moore and others 2012). Food fraud is a broader term than adulteration (Figure 1). An adulterated food is one which may be spoiled or intentionally adulterated with an adulterant- a substance which has been added illegally) (Spink and Moyer 2011). Virtually all foods have the potential to be adulterated, but those that are more expensive or are produced under changeable weather and harvesting conditions are especially vulnerable (Sharma and Paradakar 2010). Economically motivated adulteration is a subcategory of food fraud and is a

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