You are here: Home / Archives for impact of food fraud

by

Secrets of the horsemeat scandal

How did the enactment of an obscure transport law in Eastern Europe change the face of food manufacturing forever?  Karen Constable investigates the link between Romanian road rules and the horsemeat scandal.

More than six years after it first made headlines, the series of incidents that became known ‘horsegate’ continues to impact the global food industry.  It began in January 2013, when Irish authorities revealed they had discovered horsemeat in burgers that were supposed to contain 100% beef.  The discovery sparked a frenzy of testing and soon horsemeat was being discovered in dozens of different products in countries all over Europe and beyond.  The sheer scale of the contamination sent shock waves through the food manufacturing world.  Occurring five years after the melamine in milk powder scandal of 2008, which sickened over 300,000 babies in China, this incident was unfolding much closer to home for food manufacturers in Europe.  It was a wakeup call for our industry: we could no longer pretend that food fraud of a similar scale and impact as the melamine milk scandal could not happen in the western world.

Numerous massive recalls

The scandal resulted in market withdrawals of tens of millions of food products across Europe, millions of euros of lost business and multiple prosecutions.  Consumers’ trust in manufactured food plummeted and sales of frozen hamburgers and frozen ready meals dropped by 43% and 13% respectively in the United Kingdom in the month following the first product withdrawal.

Multiple investigations

Despite some media reports claiming that the first horsemeat discovery was the result of ‘routine’ testing, it is now known that the scandal was uncovered almost by accident.  As strange as it may seem to the wider community, it is unusual for food manufacturers and regulatory authorities to test foods for materials that are not expected to be present.  This is, of course, how the perpetrators of the Chinese melamine fraud could conduct their activities on such a large scale for what is thought to be a significant length of time.  The original horsemeat tests were conducted by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland because a sharp-eyed inspector had noticed a discrepancy between packaging and labelling of frozen meat.

As the investigations began it became apparent that law enforcement and regulatory authorities were ill-equipped to manage the complex cross-border issues that arose.  Supply chains seemed hopelessly complicated to unravel, with on-paper ownership of meat often disconnected from the physical whereabouts of the food.  By the time the scandal was declared over, investigators had identified at least three entirely separate supply chains involving different slaughterhouses, traders, processors and criminals.

Beef an easy target

Horsemeat and beef meat are similar in appearance, texture and flavour.  Yet the European market for horsemeat is relatively small compared with beef; it is not consumed by people in many Western European cultures. For unscrupulous merchants, however, horsemeat’s abundance and low price made it the perfect substitute for beef.   With access to a cheap, abundant adulterant, the criminals appeared to have an easy job of it.  It was so easy, in fact, that swapping horse for beef appears to have been a long-term business plan for at least one of the meat traders involved in the scandal, Jan Fasen.  Fasen had been convicted and jailed for a similar fraud in 2007.  The name of his company, Draap, is the Dutch word for horse spelt backwards.

In 2019, Fasen and his partner Hendricus Windmeijer were convicted of false labelling by a court in Paris for their role in the supply of 500 tons of meat to ready-to-eat meal-maker Comigel in France in 2012 and 2013.

Complex supply chains

Much of the horsemeat found in the affected products originated in Romania, the by-product of a unique set of circumstances which affected the availability and price of horse meat in that country.  Six years prior to the scandal, a law had been passed banning horse drawn vehicles from the streets of cities and towns in Romania.  Within a few years there was a surplus of unwanted horses, with abandoned animals roaming city streets and parks.  The horses were rounded up and exported to slaughterhouses in neighbouring countries where they were slaughtered for legitimate human and pet food.  By 2007, however, concerns about the spread of equine infectious anaemia, a disease which was endemic in Romania, resulted in a ban on the trading of live Romanian horses.  With live exports stopped, there was nowhere for the horses to go.  Enterprising local businessmen built their own slaughterhouses in Romania and began to export horse meat to Europe.

Draap Trading, a company operated from Belgium and registered in Cyprus, was among those that purchased Romanian horsemeat.  It shipped the meat to the Netherlands where it was re-labelled as beef.  From there it was sold to legitimate meat processors, including one in France who supplied the factory in Luxembourg that manufactured lasagne and spaghetti bolognese for Findus and Aldi.

Separately, a French meat processing company, À la Table de Spanghero was also purchasing horsemeat from Romania and selling it to food manufacturers labelled as beef.  The former director and manager of Spanghero were convicted for their crimes in Paris in April 2019, with the former director being jailed for his role in the saga.

Romania was not the only source, however: the burgers at the centre of the initial discovery in Ireland contained horsemeat that came not from Romania but from Britain, Germany and Poland, via another Dutch trader, Willy Selten.  In 2015 Selten was jailed for 2.5 years for crimes related to the fraudulent supply of horsemeat in 2011 and 2012.  In November 2016 he was ordered to pay €1.2m – the estimated proceeds of his crimes – to the Dutch government.

A long history of horsemeat adulteration?

Given the history of Selten and Fasen, it seems likely that undeclared horse was present in the European food supply for many years, remaining undetected and causing no apparent harm to consumers.  We will never know whether those responsible considered the safety of consumers when planning their crimes.  We do know that unsafe adulterants are more likely to be detected, which makes them less attractive to fraudsters.  Certainly, in the melamine scandal in China, just a few years prior, consumer harm played an important role in the detection of the fraud.  In that case, it is likely that low levels of melamine had been added to milk powder and other products for many months or years without causing any immediate or obvious harm to anyone.  It is thought that the concentration of melamine in baby formula increased in 2007 and 2008 and it was the higher levels that caused kidney problems in babies.  The fraud was uncovered by authorities investigating the illnesses.  Perhaps the extra melamine had been added by mistake, or perhaps the fraudsters got greedy.  Either way, the adulteration was costly for the criminals as well as their victims: two of the people responsible were executed by firing squad in China in 2009.

During the horsemeat fiasco, and to the relief of the entire industry, no person was sickened or injured by the presence of horse in ‘beef’ products.  There was, however, a major health scare: horsemeat can contain veterinary drugs, including phenylbutazone – “bute”, which can be harmful to human health.  It was a lucky coincidence that the overwhelming majority of the contaminated products proved not to contain phenylbutazone.

From horse and beef to chicken, donkey and buffalo

As investigators worked behind the scenes, public events in the European food industry took on the appearance of collapsing dominoes: first was the withdrawal of 10 million burgers by Tesco, Lidl, Aldi, Dunnes Stores and Iceland in United Kingdom.  Tesco lost £300m in market value overnight.  In the following weeks, Asda also removed tens of thousands of products from its shelves; Tesco and Aldi extended their withdrawal from burgers to ready meals; Waitrose withdrew meatballs because of fears they might contain pork; slaughterhouses in Yorkshire and Wales were raided by regulatory authorities; the scandal spread to France and multiple arrests were made on both sides of the English Channel.

By the end of March 2013, authorities had found horse labelled as beef in three Polish factories; equine DNA had been found in chicken nuggets in Greece; water buffalo and donkey had been found in South African burgers and more big brands, including Ikea, Birdseye and Nestle had been affected with their products withdrawn from markets in Cyprus, Belgium, Spain and Czech Republic.

By year’s end, Tesco’s annual profits had fallen by 52%.  Consumer trust in large food manufacturers and retailers was at an all-time low: British consumer organisation ‘Which?’ reported that sixty percent of consumers had changed their shopping habits because of the scandal.

Standards updated

The British government commissioned Professor Chris Elliott to review and report on the implications of the horsemeat contamination for the British food industry.  The Elliott review, as it became known, resulted in the creation of a special food fraud crime unit in that country and the development of a range of other collaborative enterprises across Europe including special functions within the European Joint Research Council (JRC) and food-focussed operations by Interpol known as Operation Opson, now in its sixth year.

The food safety community, initially shocked and alarmed at the potential safety implications of the adulteration soon began a period of discussion and introspection, which often centred around the unspoken question ‘What if the meat had been dangerous?’.  The scandal broke at a time when the GFSI food safety standards were consolidating their revered positions at the pinnacle of ‘best practice’ manufacturing: the standards were being strengthened, lengthened and broadened.  Audit durations were increasing, auditor qualifications and certification systems had become more stringent and standards for packaging, storage and distribution had been upgraded.  And yet these GFSI-endorsed food safety management systems, considered to be the gold-standard for food manufacturing and administered with the strictest oversight, had revealed an Achilles heel the size of Bucharest.   The GFSI promptly created the ‘Food Fraud Think Tank’ to address the gaps and suggest solutions.  This resulted in changes to GFSI’s guidance for food safety standards, with GFSI-endorsed standards being updated to reflect the updated guidance.  The new guidance requires food businesses to formally address the risks from fraudulently adulterated ingredients when they design their food safety management systems.

The food safety landscape had changed, seemingly overnight, from one that was focussed almost exclusively on unintentional or natural contamination to one that requires food manufacturers to consider, control and prevent more unpredictable and sinister events.

In the wake of these changes, a new discipline of food study has appeared.  It is now possible to study food fraud at prestigious educational institutions, attend international conferences devoted to the topic and tune in to webinars conducted by specialists in compliance, legislation and testing.  Analytical chemistry researchers are developing ever-more sophisticated test methods for detecting adulterants.  Food businesses large and small are developing better systems to prevent, deter and detect economically motivated adulteration within their supply chains.

Food manufacturers are slowly regaining the trust of consumers, helped by the visible presence of enforcement operations and government initiatives such as the United Kingdom’s Food Crime Unit and Interpol’s Operation Opson in Europe as well as the Food Safety Modernisation Act (FSMA) in the United States.

And what of the adulterated beef?  We can only guess at how many tonnes of it was eaten by unsuspecting consumers in countries all over Europe before the scandal broke.  Contaminated product that was withdrawn from the market – tens of millions of units – was destroyed; either buried in landfill or used as animal feed.  It seems a sad and wasteful journey for the unwanted horses of Romania; a journey conceived by men who wanted to be rich and one that ultimately changed the face of food manufacturing forever.

by

September food fraud update; trade wars, fruit scares and spuds

The ‘trade war’ between the USA and China is really hotting up, with China having imposed import tariffs of up to 25% on US lobsters and other food products in the previous 2 months.  The presence of tariffs greatly increases the risk of fraudulent cross-border activities; Food Fraud Advisors predicts that the new China tariffs will lead to significantly more food fraud within the Chinese-American trade sector as well as having a knock-on affect on food trade internationally.

There have already been allegations of fraud related to the tariff imposition in the North American lobster market.  Canadian lobsters can be imported to China without incurring the tariffs imposed on lobsters from the United States.  It has been alleged that lobsters grown in the USA are being shipped to Canada, re-labeled as Canadian lobsters then exported to China.  Canadian lobster growers fear damage to the ‘Canada’ brand from these activities.

The strawberry scandal in Australia has hit local consumers, retailers and growers hard.  It started with two consumers in the state of Queensland finding metal needles inside fresh strawberries.  The affected brand and its sister brand from the same grower were pulled from shelves.  Within days another needle-like object was found in strawberries from a different brand in a different state; the fruit source was completely different and the incident was labelled a ‘copycat crime’.  In Australia strawberries are typically sold to consumers in clear clam-shell containers with four air holes in the top surface.  The air holes are large enough to allow access to the fruit inside with a small sharp object like a needle while the strawberries are displayed on a supermarket (grocery store) shelf.  Public response has been confusion; why would anyone want to do such a thing?  Since then, other fruits, including apples and bananas have been similarly affected, again, in what appear to be completely independent occurrences.  The food safety sector in Australia is at a loss as to how to prevent this type of incident; fruit is by necessity displayed and accessible for consumers to touch prior to purchase, leaving it vulnerable to malicious adulteration.

Meanwhile, strawberry growers in Australia, who were already struggling to get good prices for their bumper harvest, have seen demand for their fruit plummet.  Media outlets have published reports about farmers who are dumping tonnes of unwanted fruit because the wholesale price has fallen below the cost of production.

Whole potatoes are generally thought to be at low risk of food fraud because of their relatively low value and because of their easily recognisable form.  However, like all fruit and vegetables, they are at risk of being misrepresented with respect to their geographic origin and their variety.  Growers groups have demanded that government authorities investigate allegations of potato fraud in Ireland, after a successful campaign to encourage consumption of locally-grown Queen potatoes.  It has been alleged that imported potatoes and potatoes of other varieties are being re-labelled as Irish Queen potatoes, providing an economic gain for the perpetrators of this fraud.

 

by

Fraudulent practices cost chicken processor £37m

A large chicken processing business, 2 Sisters was the biggest supplier of supermarket chicken in the United Kingdom with a turnover of £1.1 billion in 2017.  During that year, an undercover investigation revealed poor hygiene practices and tampering with date codes was taking place at one of the firm’s processing plants in West Bromwich.  Investigators also alleged that products returned from distribution centres that should have been destroyed were repackaged as if they were fresh, and that the ‘kill dates’ for chickens were deliberately misrepresented so as to extend the expiry date of the finished products.

The Food Standards Agency investigated and in addition found fraudulent practices within the Salmonella testing of the carcasses.  Salmonella testing is a regulatory requirement in the United Kingdom.  In the wake of the investigations, operations at one plant were suspended for 2 weeks, while another was closed permanently.  In April, it was announced that another plant, in Scotland will be closed later this year.

This week, 2 Sisters reported losses of £38 million for the year, a figure that was reported to have ‘ballooned’ by 80% after the fraudulent practices were uncovered.

by

Food Fraud; the faces behind the crimes

In our previous look at the motivations behind food fraud we discovered that it takes many forms.  From spices that contain illegal colourants, such as lead chromate in turmeric, to ‘organic’ grains that are shipped with forged documents, the types of frauds that are perpetrated with food are many and varied.

Consumers have been victims of food fraud for as long as trade itself; medieval bread was adulterated with chalk, ancient Roman wine was sweetened with lead, Americans were unwittingly fed illegal horsemeat in the 1800s and more recently, baby formula and pet food have had their apparent protein content illegally enhanced with the addition of melamine. It is easy to understand why a miller in the middle ages might have diluted his flour with chalk or an ancient winemaker might have added honey or water to his wine; the ‘enhancements’ were done to increase profits or to otherwise help their businesses, for example by being able to meet demand when materials were in short supply.

The motivation for financial gain experienced by the millers and wine-sellers of ancient times remains today and is the defining characteristic of the crimes that we now refer to as food fraud.  Michigan State University’s Food Fraud Initiative recently defined it as follows: “Food fraud is deception, using food, for economic gain” (2016).  Other crimes that involve tampering with food, say for the purposes of extortion or to cause harm to consumers, are specifically excluded from this definition.  Adulteration of food with the intention of causing harm is now widely called an issue of ‘food defense’.

It has been said that there are large networks of organised criminals working together to manufacture and supply fraudulent foods.  While that is certainly the case for some types of food fraud, that is by no means the only type of food fraud perpetrator.  There are many different people involved with food fraud and each has his or her own motivations.

Ms Natalie Crayton owns an artisan sea salt business in Scotland.  Artisan salt typically sells in retail stores for three to five times the price of ‘ordinary’ table salt.  In May of 2017, Ms Crayton’s business, Hebridean Sea Salt, was accused by local authorities of deceiving consumers by claiming that the salt was hand-produced from the waters of the Hebrides.  Investigations commenced after authorities were tipped off by a former employee.  Investors alleged that more than 80% of the product did not originate in the Hebrides but was imported from elsewhere.  Ms Crayton claimed that the foreign salt crystals were used to ‘seed’ the Hebridean water to create the product, a practice which is legitimate, but usually achieved with very much lower percentages of added seed crystal.

Local, natural sea salt, from the waters of the Scottish Hebrides…. perhaps

What is to be gained by swapping out some of the locally made salt with imported salt?  Of course that depends on the cost of production of the local salt versus the cost of the imported salt.  Alibaba is currently listing wholesale food grade sea salt at US$45 and $1000 per tonne, roughly equivalent to £0.03 to £0.77 per kg.  If an artisan producer who makes local salt at a cost of £3 per kg with a gross margin of two percent replaces just thirty percent of local salt with imported salt their gross profit could increase from around two pence per kilogram to almost seventy pence per kilogram, an increase of more than three thousand percent.  Under that scenario there are significant financial gains to be made from substituting components.  On the other hand, there is also plenty to lose.

Since the investigation into the Hebridean Sea Salt company began, it has ceased operation and its products are no longer available in the market.  The brand has been severely damaged and may never recover.  Ms Clayton may be able to defend her actions in court, or may be able to prove that allegations about the concentration of imported salt in the finished products are false.  But, whether or not the claims are upheld, her business faces financial ruin.

Like Ms Clayton, the vice president of Creation Foods, Kefir Sadiklar faces an uncertain future.  He and his family-run company were charged by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency over their supply of falsely described ‘kosher’ cheddar cheese to Jewish summer camps in 2015.  It is alleged that the company forged documents to make it appear that the cheese was kosher and put the forged documents inside boxes of non-kosher cheese.  When the boxes of cheese arrived at one of the summer camps, an employee noticed that some of the boxes bore the COR symbol, a kosher certification trademark, and some did not.  The employee requested clarification from Creation Foods, wanting to be sure that the cheese was fit to use at the camp.  According to information provided to investigators by the Kashruth Council of Canada, owner of the trademark, Sadiklar provided two certificates.  The first was for the wrong food while the second, supplied a few hours later appeared to be correct.  However, the employee must have remained suspicious, because he sent the second certificate to Kashruth Council, who noticed that it appeared to be a forgery: a single digit in the product code on the certificate had been altered to match the product code on the box of cheese.  The council contacted the police who passed the case to the food inspection agency, which is responsible for enforcing food label laws in Canada.  The resulting prosecution is the first of its type in Canada.

Creation Foods is a manufacturer of bakery products, and also acts as a distributor for products made by other businesses, including the cheese it supplied to the summer camps.  Creation Foods was certified by the Kashruth Council in 2011 and permitted to use the council’s COR symbol on some of its food products.  However, it appears to have a history of using the symbol on non-kosher products and was told to ‘cease and desist’ by the council in 2012 and again in 2013.  In 2013 the council issued an alert to businesses that had purchased cakes made by Creation Foods, claiming that the cakes were not kosher despite bearing a COR symbol on the pack and warning purchasers that Creation Food’s use of the symbol was unauthorised.

The allegations about Sadiklar and Creation Foods are damning; they imply a willingness by the company to mislead its customers on a number of occasions over a period of years.  Interestingly, the price difference between the non-kosher and kosher versions of the brand of cheese involved is said to be just two to three percent.  Does food fraud that increases profits by such a small margin generate enough extra income to justify the risks?  Perhaps.  When very large volumes of food are involved, even tiny increases in margins can make a significant difference to a company’s bottom line, but in this case large volumes are not likely to be a factor.  We do not know if Sadiklar’s motivation was to generate a little more profit from the summer camp order or whether there were other forces at play… perhaps Creation Foods was holding too much stock of non-kosher cheese that was nearing its expiry date, or perhaps they had run out of kosher cheese and risked upsetting their customer by failing to fulfil the order on time. Or perhaps the risk of facing any repercussions seemed so low that even a small monetary gain could somehow feel justified.  Sadiklar and Creation Foods denies any wrongdoing so we may never know.

On a more positive note, although the fraud that is alleged to have occurred with this incident was easy to perpetrate, it was also relatively easy to detect: the customer noticed an anomaly with the kosher symbol on the boxes, requested clarification from the supplier and then, when that did not appear quite right, attempted to verify the authenticity of the certification directly with the issuing authority.  That is an excellent way to verify the authenticity of certified materials; by contacting the certifier, especially if the certification body is well-respected or are themselves accredited.

A similar case of forged documents resulted in five years jail for the men involved.  Mahmudur Rohman and Kamal Rahman were convicted by a British court for conspiracy to commit fraud after Leicestershire food safety inspectors discovered that ‘lamb’ meat they supplied was actually turkey.  The tests were conducted as part of a local testing protocol that was implemented after the European horse meat scandal of 2013.

Investigators from the trading standards office revealed that not only was the ‘lamb’ made from an entirely different animal, but the halal certificates it had been supplied with were forged.  The company is estimated to have made profits of £300K – £400K during the period in which the frauds were occurring.

Meat seems like an ‘easy target’ for food fraud; it is not easy for customers and consumers to tell the difference between meat species, especially after it has been cooked in dishes like curries.  Energy drinks on the other hand are not often featured in news items about food fraud.  Meet Walid Jamil who, along with ten others, is being sued by an American energy drink company, Living Essentials, owner of the 5-hour Energy beverage brand.  Living Essentials claims Jamil and his associates manufactured and sold counterfeit copies of 5-hour Energy.  Jamil has a history of food fraud, having been implicated in an earlier scam in which counterfeit Pillsbury products as well as the sweeteners Equal, Splenda and Truvia were manufactured in a facility in Michigan.  No criminal or civil charges were placed against Jamil or his colleagues after that bust, so it’s little wonder that he was willing to get involved with the energy drinks scheme.

It was a big operation: the energy drink counterfeiters were manufacturing replica bottles bearing high quality labels and shrink sleeves in a warehouse in California that operated 24 hours per day and made about 1.5 million bottles a month, according to Geoffrey Potter, the lead counsel for Living Essentials. The drinks were placed into legitimate distribution channels in the guise of diverted product or returns.  Sales of the genuine drink were affected and a sales rep for Living Essentials became suspicious about the source of product in a certain retail outlet.  He sent a sample to the company’s headquarters for analysis which sparked a recall and investigation.  Potter reports that when investigators found the fraudsters there was so much money changing hands that “they had to use shopping bags to pass it out.”

How did the perpetrators make so much money?  The significantly lower operating costs incurred by a clandestine operation compared to legitimate beverage manufacturing might surprise consumers.  Clandestine manufacturing operations cut corners in every area: cleaning and sanitation, pest control services, facility maintenance, food safety systems, record-keeping, audit fees, labour costs – including through the use of illegal workers – unsafe and unhygienic equipment, substandard ingredients, non-food-grade packaging, untreated water, illegal waste disposal, substandard transport and storage conditions, failure to pay business registration fees, trademark registrations and by avoiding advertising costs.  The result is an unsafe product, unsafe work environments and loss of government revenue as well as damage to the brand owners.

Compared to Living Essentials, the fraudsters who produced fake 5-hour Energy could make product and get it to the market much more cheaply.  Worse still, although it is often said that consumers can spot ‘fake’ foods because their prices are too good to be true, counterfeiters can and do sell their products at the same price points as their legitimate counterparts.  In doing so they stand to make significant profits.  However, as we have seen, the perpetrators also have a lot to lose.  Civil penalties of $20 million were delivered in the 5-hour Energy case.  The price of food fraud can include loss of businesses and livelihood, high profile prosecutions, unwanted media attention, court appearances, jail time as well as million dollar penalties and fines.  New cases are uncovered every day by sharp-eyed customers, food inspectors and by insiders who want to do the right thing.  For those involved with food fraud, it’s only a matter of time before their crimes catch up with them.

Update: Creation Foods Company was fined CAD25,000, having pleaded guilty to the charges.

Want more stories?  Like us on Facebook to receive news items like these straight to your news feed. Food Fraud Advisors on Facebook

by

Food fraud; meet the perpetrators

Criminals, con-men, fraudsters… whatever we might like to call them, it’s a fair bet that many people who are responsible for food fraud don’t see themselves as ‘proper’ criminals.  And it’s timely to remember that, although we often talk about food fraud using abstract concepts like ‘supply chain’, and ‘grey market’, the real story behind food fraud is men and women conducting illegal activities.

So who are the people responsible for food fraud?  Although research specific to food-related fraud is scarce, within the broader world of ‘white collar crime’, fraud is overwhelming thought to be committed by men rather than women.  People involved in food fraud can be classified into two types;

  • Opportunistic fraudsters; and,
  • Organised fraudsters.

Opportunistic criminals are those who are ‘in the right place at the right time’.  They are most likely to be an employee or owner of a business within the food supply chain who has identified an opportunity to make a profit.  Unfortunately, it appears that within this group there are many who feel compelled to commit fraud after finding their business in difficult circumstances.  Commonly, the fraud will be committed to meet supply contracts or expectations of customers or to prevent bankruptcy.

close up of poultry processing in food industry

Organised food fraud criminals have different motivations and often work in groups that actively seek out opportunities to make money without regard for laws and regulations.  Often, these criminals will operate within other industries in addition to the food industry.  Their frauds tend to be larger, more complicated and continue for longer periods of time than opportunistic frauds. The people behind these crimes are less likely to be legitimate employees of the food industry, but will know people inside the industry whom they use to gain access to the supply chain.  Compared to opportunistic fraudsters,  the activities of organised criminals tend to involve more people and the fraud is more likely to have a broader affect along and across supply chains.  Combined with the fact that organised criminals are very likely to repeat their crimes if they prove to be profitable this means the frauds perpetrated by organised criminals can have a very large impact.

Opportunistic Organised
Food industry connections More likely to be employed within industry Contacts and links to industry
Motivations One-off financial gains or motivated by the need to prevent business financial failure or meet sales/supply contracts Motivated by direct financial gain to support other criminal activities
Knowledge of food processes Detailed knowledge of some processes Both detailed and limited knowledge of various processes
Knowledge of detection likelihood Often limited knowledge about the likelihood of detection Often limited knowledge about the likelihood of detection
 Knowledge of successful strategies  Usually well informed about the likelihood of success Usually well informed about the likelihood of success
Repeat offences Less likely to repeat More likely to repeat if successful
 Impact of activities  Less potential impact than organised fraudsters Potentially higher impacts due to broader reach and higher likelihood of repeating a fraud

blue drums on pallet

Food fraud perpetrators from around the globe

Yakub Moosa Yusuf has been described as Britain’s most notorious food fraud criminal and has been jailed twice over fraudulent meat trading, including selling meat that was falsely declared to be halal.

In Asia, a Taiwanese seafood company allegedly found itself with an oversupply of expensive frozen shrimp after sales were affected by a downturn in the number of tourists from China.  Rather than discard the shrimp and face financial losses, the owner and his son are alleged to have tampered with the expiry dates and sold the stock, saving their business and reportedly making a tidy sum of US$22m in the process.

North America’s Mucci Farms attracted plenty of negative media attention and a $1.5m fine after a three year investigation by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency  found that the business had been misrepresenting the country of origin of produce, including cucumbers and peppers, to meet the demand for locally-grown food.  Inspectors first became suspicious when they noticed that the outside of some cardboard cartons appeared to have had stickers peeled off and replaced with stickers that said “Product of Canada” stickers, while stickers on the inside of the cartons “Product of Mexico.”  Court documents described one scenario in which Mucci needed to supply Canadian-grown mini-cucumbers but could not find local sources.

In Europe, this French olive supplier sold cheaper Spanish olives to local olive oil producers, misrepresenting their provenance, after having problems sourcing local olives due to harvests being affected by the olive fruit fly pest.

And finally, a cab driver from Chester, in England endangered the lives of his customers by selling fake vodka containing toxic chemicals.  He was found with illegal tobacco and alcohol worth £1,700.

Read Part 2 of Meet the Perpetrators