Concerns over tax identity theft and medical identity theft often make headlines. But cases of another potentially deadly type of fraud have accumulated more quietly.
This kind of fraud can cause allergic reactions, food poisoning and other illnesses — resulting occasionally in deaths.
It’s informally known as “food fraud.” In some instances, the practice is relatively harmless, such as passing off a cheaper fish fillet as a more expensive species.
But other examples can be more dangerous, such as the decision by a company in China several years ago to add chemicals to diluted baby formula to boost its protein content. That incident led to the deaths of several Chinese infants.
According to a 2014 report by the Congressional Research Service, the federal government has yet to establish a statutory definition for “economically motivated adulteration” (EMA), a term often used interchangeably with “food fraud.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has adopted a working definition, however:
“Fraudulent, intentional substitution or addition of a substance in a product for the purpose of increasing the apparent value of the product or reducing the cost of its production, i.e., for economic gain.”
To help you avoid becoming an unwitting victim of food fraud, we’ve compiled the following tips.
1. Understand that food fraud is relatively common in the U.S.
In nearly 30 percent of all food-fraud incidents, the fraudulent products were produced in the United States, according to the Congressional Research Service report.
After the U.S., the greatest number of incidents involved products from China (about 14 percent) and India (about 13 percent).
Food fraud incidents in other countries severely impact U.S. consumers, according to the publication Food Safety News, because the food industry has become globalized over the past decade.
2. Know which food categories are associated with food fraud
Reports of fish and seafood fraud are by far most common in a food-fraud database maintained by the National Center for Food Protection and Defense at the University of Minnesota.
Fraud involving dairy products and oils/fats came in second and third, respectively.
According to a 2012 article in the Journal of Food Science, reports of olive oil fraud were the most common type of fraud listed in a database maintained by the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention, a nonprofit organization that (among other things) sets standards of ” identity, strength, quality and purity” for food ingredients. The FDA enforces these standards in the United States.
Fraud involving milk and honey came in second and third, respectively.