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A fine time for food fraud

A decade on from the horsemeat scandal the risk of fraud looms as large as ever over the foodservice sector. Nick Hughes reports.

It was 10 years ago this month that horsemeat was first detected in foods labelled as beef burgers, ready meals and other convenience food products. The scandal tainted both the retail and foodservice sectors, caused public outrage and made national headlines for weeks. And then, slowly but surely, the circus moved on. For most citizens, food fraud reverted to being a trivial concern that didn’t impinge on their day-to-day lives.

Fast forward a decade and there is reason to believe another adulteration scandal could be lurking just around the corner. This is not due to a lack of diligence on the part of food businesses who by and large have significantly improved the policing of their supply chains since horsemeat penetrated their defences. Rather, the fear comes from a cocktail of external risks that collectively mean the UK is primed to become a target for food fraudsters and organised criminals, according to experts.

Sky high levels of commodity price inflation; cuts to local authority enforcement capabilities; the war in Ukraine; and Brexit have coalesced to create an ideal set of conditions for criminals to exploit – and foodservice could be right in their crosshairs, according to the man who conducted the official government review into the horsemeat scandal. “There’s basically three food systems in the UK,” Professor Chris Elliott tells Footprint. “There’s the big retailers, then there’s [mainstream] foodservice, and then there’s the whole network of SMEs and [independent] fast food outlets. Each of those has increasing levels of risk because of their reliance on traders and dealers which means you’re never quite sure where you’re sourcing from.”

Elliott completed his independent review in 2014 in which he recommended a systems approach to tackling food crime based around eight pillars of food integrity (I worked as part of the secretariat to the review housed within Defra). Many of his recommendations have since been adopted by industry and governments (others, such as ensuring access to resilient laboratory services, have not). Business audits, for example, are now more fraud aware and largely unannounced rather than planned, encouraging an ‘always on’ culture of compliance.

Intelligence advances

Intelligence gathering and sharing both by regulators and businesses is much improved thanks to the creation of the Food Industry Intelligence Network (Fiin) and expansion of the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) horizon scanning capability. Elliott is especially impressed by Fiin, of which major foodservice players including Brakes, Compass Group and 2Sisters were founder members. The network now comprises 60 organisations from across the UK food and drink supply chain. Each quarter, Fiin members submit data relating to raw material, ingredient testing or finished product testing which is then anonymised and consolidated by an independent third-party legal specialist – Eversheds Sutherland. A report is then produced which is shared with members; while an intelligence sharing agreement signed between Fiin and UK regulators allows information on food fraud risks to flow both ways.

The UK is also better able to investigate food crime due to the establishment of the National Food Crime Unit (NFCU) and Scottish Food Crime Unit. At the time of the horsemeat scandal there was no agency or force properly equipped to investigate and prosecute this particular type of offence. Since their inception in 2015 the two units have gradually built up their intelligence and investigative capabilities to the point that together they reported 100 successful disruptions of criminal activity within the food chain in 2021 and achieved the first prosecution in England stemming from an investigation into the illegal sale of 2,4-dinitrophenol (DNP), a highly toxic industrial chemical which was being illegally sold as a diet pill for weight loss.

Fraud incentive

Yet despite the strengthening of the collective lines of defence against fraud, an argument can be made that the incentive both to commit fraud and to target the UK is greater than ever.

A key reason is Brexit, following which the UK lost full access to key EU-wide food fraud intelligence sharing systems and networks such as RASFF (rapid alert system for food and feed) and the Food Fraud Network. Not only that, but post-Brexit physical checks at the UK border for high-risk products like meat and dairy have consistently been delayed by the government leading to concerns the UK is now a target destination for food criminals. In October, officials from Dover Port Health Authority supported by the FSA found a total of 2.4 tonnes of illegal pork contained within 21 of 22 lorries entering the UK from Romania, Moldova, Ukraine and Poland over a 24-hour period. It is such discoveries that inform Elliott’s view that the UK is now “a dumping ground” for trans-European shipments of fraudulent food.

Local resources for tackling food fraud are also weaker than they were 10 years ago. In 2012/13 there were 560 trading standards and environmental health officers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland; now there are just 351 according to the FSA. Those officers are taking fewer samples of food (the FSA reports a 79.1% drop in non-microbiological samples taken by local authorities since 2016), while the UK’s ability to rapidly scale up testing capacity in the event of another major adulteration scandal is hanging by a thread. Back in 2013 there were nine public analyst official laboratories in England, Wales and Northern Ireland; now there are just five.

This weakening of the UK’s enforcement capabilities comes at a time when global economic and political factors are combining to create a huge financial incentive to perpetrate food crimes such as substitution, adulteration and misrepresentation. Volatility in commodity prices is considered a major red flag for the risk of fraud. “We try to track commodity prices and it’s crazy,” says Elliott. “Some of them have doubled in price since this time last year. That is a paradise for fraudsters. I keep warning people that if you’re not facing massive inflation in the ingredients that you’re buying then somebody’s probably duping it.”

Fish risk

Herbs and spices are near the top of Elliott’s current risk list while rice – where fraud often involves the replacement of premium products such as Basmati with inferior grains – is also “very high on our radar screen” because of crop failures including last year’s devastating floods in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the supply chain disruption caused by the war in Ukraine is creating its own set of risks, notably around seafood. Russia alone owns around 40% of the world’s white fish quota. “The impact in terms of incentive or opportunity for species and origin substitution driven by the change in the global white fish market is massive,” one seafood expert told me.

The horsemeat adulteration turned out not to pose a risk to human health, but wherever food fraud is perpetrated that risk can never be discounted. Take the example of sunflower oil for which Russia and Ukraine are major exporters. The product has seen its price soar amid tightening supplies forcing businesses to search for alternatives. “People who are allergic to peanuts need to be very concerned because peanut oil is cheaper than sunflower oil and is the obvious substitute,” explains Julie Barratt, president of the Chartered Institute for Environmental Health.

Barratt believes “the opportunities for food criminals have probably never been better than they currently are”. Despite increased food fraud awareness among businesses since the horsemeat scandal she believes the UK remains vulnerable. “We are dealing with very sophisticated criminals who make food fraud their crime of choice. They’ll always be one step ahead of us.”

Foodservice vulnerability

Speaking at the CIEH’s annual conference last year, head of the NFCU Darren Davies suggested the foodservice sector is particularly vulnerable to food crime given its sprawling, fragmented nature. While the big supermarket chains and food manufacturers can lean on the support of large in-house technical teams, foodservice operators tend to be less well-resourced. For independent outlets in particular food fraud may not be on their radar at all. As one food safety consultant told me: “A lot of people don’t know the right questions to ask because they haven’t got a food technologist on their side.”

A recently published independent review into the NFCU found that the UK public continues to underestimate the threat from food crime. But for those who were forced to pick through the rubble of the industry’s reputation in 2013, the risk is real and the incentive to prevent another horsemeat-type scandal could hardly be greater.