Food Standards Agency sees local authority reports of food fraud double in a year

The number of reports submitted to the Food Standards Agency by local authorities about food fraud more than doubled in 2009.

The increase – to 820 incidents – follows a concerted attempt by the agency to raise awareness of the issue and the need for organisations to share information about fraudulent activity.

Food fraud is committed when food is deliberately placed on the market, for financial gain, with the intention of deceiving the consumer. The two main types are:

• The sale of food which is unfit and potentially harmful. This includes recycling animal by-products into the food chain, packing and selling beef and poultry with an unknown origin, and knowingly selling goods which are past their use by date.
• The deliberate misdescription of food, whilst not necessarily unsafe, deceives the consumer. This might include substituting products with a cheaper alternative or making false statements about the source of ingredients.

The Food Standards Agency’s food fraud programme is designed to improve the assistance given to local authorities in investigating such activities, by raising awareness and take-up of the resources available.

The programme also produces intelligence gathered from various sources to assist local authority investigations and instigate new investigations.

Commenting on the sharp increase in reports, the Agency said: “It is important that this trend continues and we would encourage local authorities, industry and consumers to routinely send us any information concerning food fraud, irrespective of how insignificant it may appear.

“Through the analysis of a significantly larger data set, we have been able to produce better intelligence, enabling us to provide greater assistance with local authority investigations. In turn this has resulted in a number of successful operations.”

The Food Standards Agency reviewed its communication routes with local authorities in 2009. It now proposes, amongst other things, to replace food alerts for information with product withdrawal/recall information notices, a move to address feedback from some local authority that they see too many alerts.

The Agency said the change, which will take effect next month, would also increase its speed of response during incidents.