International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) Volume 4 Issue 3, April 2020 Available Online: www.ijtsrd.com e-ISSN: 2456 – 6470 @ IJTSRD | Unique Paper ID – IJTSRD30319 | Volume – 4 | Issue – 3 | March-April 2020 Page 107 Food Fraud: A Primer Matthew N. O. Sadiku 1 , Tolulope J. Ashaolu 2 , Sarhan M. Musa 1 1 Roy G. Perry College of Engineering, Prairie View A&M University, Prairie View, Texas 2 College of Food Science, Southwest University, Tiansheng Road Beibei District, Chongqing, China ABSTRACT Food fraud is a major problem with all food and drink businesses. It has become a global problem of increasing importance. Fraud may be regarded as the intentional misrepresentation of fact by one person or an organization. Food fraud is the deliberate alteration of food. It is widely accepted in the food industry as illegal deception for economic gain using food. The most common types of food fraud include deliberate substitution, misrepresentation or mislabeling, adulteration, stolen goods, tampering, diversion, smuggling, and concealment. All these types of fraud have the potential to seriously endanger food quality and safety. They can also cause direct or indirect threats to public health. This provides a primer on food fraud. KEYWORDS: food fraud, fake food, food fraud prevention, fraud food vulnerability, food integrity, food crime How to cite this paper: Matthew N. O. Sadiku | Tolulope J. Ashaolu | Sarhan M. Musa "Food Fraud: A Primer" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456- 6470, Volume-4 | Issue-3, April 2020, pp.107-110, URL: www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd30319.pdf Copyright © 2020 by author(s) and International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development Journal. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by /4.0) INTRODUCTION Food is indispensable for human survival. The food corporations have a tremendous effect in determining our health and nutrition. The increasing industrialization and globalization of our food supply chains (from farm to fork) have posed new challenges for the safety and quality of the food products. Due to globalization of production and distribution, food fraud incidents could be massive and have regional or global impact. Food fraud has become a major concern for consumers all over the world. Ethical products are becoming more demanded by consumers and reciprocally provided by food businesses. Consumers need to have confidence in food products for many reasons. First, it requires consumer trust for any food business to grow and offer high- quality food products. That trust is lost when there is food fraud. Second, it takes a few cases of food fraud to damage the reputation of an entire food industry. FOOD FRAUD CONCEPT Food fraud (FF) is not a new phenomenon. It has been around for more than 2,000 years and is everywhere. FF incidents date as far back as the Roman empire. The Melamine incidents in 2007/2008 and the horsemeat scandal in 2013 have drawn great attention of both the media and consumer [1]. Food fraud is the intentional, deceptive misrepresentation of foods for economic gain. It is the act of purposely altering, misrepresenting, mislabeling, substituting or tampering with any food product at any point in the food supply chain. It is a fraudulent practice that is driven by economic gain and embraces the deliberate substitution, addition, or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients or food packaging. It differs from other food safety and integrity issues, as it is a deliberate, economically-motivated, activity. Food fraud experts define the fraud opportunity using three legs of a triangle (victim, fraudster, absence of a capable guardian). The area within the triangle determines the fraud opportunity [2]. Seven types of food fraud have been identified as shown in Figure 1 [3] and explained as follows [4,5]: 1. Adulteration: A component of the finished product is fraudulent. Food fraud includes economically motivated adulteration (EMA). As shown in Figure 2, the adulteration may intentional or unintentional [6]. 2. Tampering: Legitimate product and packaging are used in a fraudulent way. 3. Over-run: Legitimate product is made in excess of production agreements. 4. Theft: Legitimate product is stolen and passed off as legitimately procured, e.g., cargo theft, shoplifting, employee theft, etc. 5. Diversion: The sale or distribution of legitimate products outside of intended markets; e.g. illegal gray market, parallel trade, smuggling, illegal import, etc. 6. Simulation: Illegitimate product is designed to look like, but not exactly copy, the legitimate product. 7. Counterfeit: All aspects of the fraudulent product and packaging are fully replicated. This is also known as misrepresentation. IJTSRD30319