Looking back at the first seven month of this year, we reviewed the reports on food fraud from the European Commission. The country with the majority of the reports was Italy, followed by Spain. It appears as if the authorities in the Mediterranean countries stepped up their battle against food fraud significantly.
Food Fraud Reports by Country (2018 to July)
Looking at the commodities reported, this year fish and meat products are on top of the list of records. However, there were also a number of cases of adulterated French and Italian wine and cheese, and notoriously, spices.
Food Fraud Reports by Commodity (2018 to July)
Grouping by type of adulteration, mislabeling and substitution are the top two categories, followed by artificial enhancement and unfit for consumption (which in most cases relates to selling expired products).
Food Fraud Reports by Type fo Adulteration (2018 to July)
*unfit according to the report most often refers to expired products.
The charts you have seen so far are the analysis of the cases reported in the EC Food Fraud Reporter. Following this, the RASFF database was queried for the category food fraud/adulteration.
RASFF Adulteration Records by Reporting Country (2018 to July)
It is interesting to note that there seems to be no direct correlation between the number of cases reported in the Food Fraud Reporter and the cases reported in RASFF. Italy, in the Food Fraud Reporter, had the highest number of records, while in RASFF, it was UK, and Italy was only found in the middle field.
More interesting is that the vast majority of cases reported in the Food Fraud Reporter are related to fish and meat, while in the RASFF database, nuts accounted for the highest number of notifications.
Also, looking at the countries of origin, the difference is significant: many, if not most cases reported in Italy, were “homemade”, i.e. adulterated Italian wine and cheese, mislabeled fish. According to the RASFF database, India tried to import the highest number of adulterated products into Europe, followed by China.
Another interesting observation is the categorization in the RASFF database relating to the seriousness of cases. There are three categories: serious, not serious and undecided. Looking through the cases reported, it raises questions why, for example, a health certificate that was signed before the analytical reports had been issued, is categorized as “non-serious”. If the health inspectors did not even know the outcome of the microbiological and chemical analysis, how could they know of the product they signed for is fit for human consumption? Equally, a chocolate which expiry date had been illegally extended by one year is also categorized as “non-serious”.
It is unfortunate though that the European Commission decided to not publicize all collected data, but rather collate them in a separate system which is only accessible to competent authorities. It demonstrates, yet again, a clear lack of transparency.
