How Is Food Crime Tackled?

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Food Standards Scotland (FSS) have published a 2024 Food Crime Strategic Assessment, updating their 2020 assessment, outlining the threat from food crime in the UK.

BCL's Tom McNeill, Richard Reichman, and Christina Josephides consider the FSA and FSS report, and its key findings.

What were the key findings of the report?

The report describes the "threat landscape" as significantly similar to 2020, noting the likely role of those having "legitimate roles and responsibilities...in aspects of the food chain, allowing them to apply insider knowledge to abuse system vulnerabilities in both committing and hiding food crimes."

The report also noted, "Some individuals conducting food crime offences are also involved in unrelated criminality, such as drugs and violence."And, "We also continue to note threats to the UK food supply chain resulting from illicit activity outside of the UK, alongside that criminality perpetrated domestically."

However, new themes have emerged since 2020, including those linked to economic pressures faced by businesses and consumers; supply chain disruption linked to global events; changes to food importation practices; local authority resourcing issues; and shifts in the understanding of food criminal profiles, activity and networks.

Key findings include:

• the increase in threat level arising from waste diversion offences concerning Animal By-Products (ABP) linked to unapproved and unlicenced raw pet food;
• a substantial rise in local authority reporting of illicit import products on sale in UK convenience stores; and
• a significant reduction in the entry of illicitly gathered shellfish into the UK food chain;

What are the main types of food crime?

In the report, food crime is separated into seven identifiable but overlapping methods:

Theft: "the dishonest appropriations of food, drink or feed products from their lawful owner with an intention to benefit economically from their subsequent use or sale."

Theft of livestock is the most prevalent offence, presenting significant risks to consumers arising from the unknown origins, medical history and health status of animals.

Unlawful Processing: "the slaughter, preparation or processing of products of animal origin outside of the relevant regulatory framework."

Unlawful processing can involve the illegal slaughter of animals in unapproved circumstances and processing products in unapproved or unregistered establishments.

Waste Diversion: "the unauthorised diversion of food, drink or feed intended for disposal back into relevant supply chains"

Intelligence reporting on waste diversion has increased since 2020, mainly regarding the illicit use of ABPs which risks spreading transmissible animal diseases by circumventing safety regulations.

Adulteration: "reducing the quality of a food product through the inclusion of another substance, with the intention either to make production costs lower, or apparent quality higher."

These methods continue to be reported as a trend, notably in red meat products, fish products, honey, edible oils, herbs and spices, rice, and pasta.

Substitution: "replacing a food product or ingredient with another substance of a similar but inferior kind"

Fast food products accounted for the majority of detected adulteration and substitution cases – commonly in pizza toppings.

Misrepresentation: "the marketing or labelling of a product so as to inaccurately portray its quality, safety, benefit, origin or freshness"

Misrepresentation continues to gain prominence and includes false claims as to product source (e.g. free range, halal); Protected Geographic Indication status (e.g. Feta, Cornish Pasties, Parma ham); and freshness or durability (e.g. relabelling and packing of out-of-date produce).

Document Fraud: "the use of false or misappropriated documents to sell, market or otherwise vouch for a fraudulent or substandard product"

This includes the generation of false documents to falsely authenticate commodity origin, quality etc. or the population of legitimate documentation with false information.

What are the main contributing factors to food crime?

Whilst noting that it can be difficult to accurately measure causal links, the report suggests the following as possible contributing factors to food crime:

• Economic pressure on businesses and consumers: often, food crime is financially motivated – operators combat rising production costs with an increase in consumer demand for competitively priced products.
• Supply chains and world events: global events such as geopolitical conflicts disrupt the nature and volume of trade flows, and the supply of products.
• Changes in importation regulations and practices: for example, the Border Target Operating Model (for imports from the EU and third countries) and the Windsor Framework (for goods moving in and out of Northern Ireland and within the UK).

What are the suggestions for how to prevent food crime?

Local Authority Resourcing and Methods: The FSA works with local authorities rolling out new models for food standard controls which focus on risk-based and intelligence-driven approaches to sampling and inspection.

Border Arrangements and Legislative Amendments: the FSA is working with the government on strategies to identify and discourage deliberate misdeclarations and routing decisions for incoming goods.

Improved Technology: developments in food authenticity technologies improve the ability for industries and regulators to assess quality and accuracy of goods.

Multi-agency Collaboration in the Private and Public Sector: Information and knowledge sharing are key to understanding and combatting food crime.

Continued Monitoring: The FSS and FSA commit to continuing to agree control strategies based on the current intelligence and threat landscape to monitor areas of concern and future threats, applying and implementing holistic approaches to tackling food crime.

How is food crime tackled?

The report notes that "Tackling food crime continues to require collaboration, cooperation and shared insight between partners in the regulatory environment, law enforcement and also within the private and third sectors." And, "The responsibility which businesses hold to know their supply chains, and manage fraud risks within them, remains paramount but we can support industry in this work."

Most significantly, the report recognises that effective deterrence of food crime requires successful criminal prosecutions, pointing to "successful prosecutions of individuals involved in food crime, with a number of other cases awaiting court dates."

This is where things can get a little tricky. With the prevalence of food crime – the FSA estimates the total annual cost of food crime in the UK to be between £410 million and £1.96 billion – and with the recognised involvement of those with "legitimate roles and responsibilities" where "investigations into suspected food crime in the supply chain have been varied in scale, theme and complexity", it can be difficult distinguishing between food criminals and legitimate businesses and individuals themselves the victims of compromised supply chains.

This article was first written for and published by LexisNexis on 02 October 2024. To read the full article click here (£).