New resource to help combat food fraud

The Food Fraud Advisory Unit (FFAU) is a group of 16 officials with extensive skills and experience in carrying out food fraud investigations, most of whom are practicing local authority enforcement officers. They will provide advice on request to any UK local authority involved in investigating food fraud.

The FFAU represents the latest development in a series of resources the FSA is making available to help combat food fraud.

Food fraud is committed when food is deliberately placed on the market, for financial gain, with the intention of deceiving the consumer. Although there are many kinds of food fraud there are two main types:

The sale of food that is unfit and potentially harmful. This could mean recycling animal by-products back into the food chain, packing and selling beef and poultry with an unknown origin and knowingly selling goods that are past their use by date.

The second most common food fraud is deliberate misdescription of food. While not necessarily unsafe, it deceives the consumer as to the nature of the product. This could be products substituted with a cheaper alternative, such as farmed salmon sold as wild, or making false statements about the source of ingredients, i.e. their geographic, plant or animal origin.