Crime

Image credit: Susanne Kuehne

Several companies were involved in a warehouse operation that was relabeling expired meat or manipulating its best before dates, re-selling the meat to restaurants and other distribution points. Spanish officials seized 122 tons of meat and arrested more than a dozen people. Food fraud on that level endangers the health and, in some cases, even the lives of consumers and urgently needs to be uncovered and prosecuted.

Here's what's at stake for American producers in a climate of rampant mislabeling. thecounter.org/grass-fed-beef…

Food fraud is a global problem, the size of which cannot be fully quantified. A new book edited and authored by experts on the topic seeks to comprehensively address food fraud, covering everything from its history and mitigation strategies, to tools and analytical detection methods, to diving into fraud in specific products such as ingredients, meat, poultry and seafood.

UK Border Force officers have disrupted a large drug smuggling operation after seizing almost a ton of cocaine -with a street value of around £76 million- hidden among bananas at the Port of Southampton. The Class A drugs, weighing a total of 946 kg, were found within a shipping container on a commercial…

Kelowna Regional RCMP say a shipment of cocaine that arrived in the central Okanagan in 2019 was shipped in banana containers.

Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit: Susanne Kuehne

For more than 40 years, a syndicate of bribed government and custom officials and slaughterhouses did lucrative business by smuggling fake halal meat into Malaysia. The meat originated in unapproved slaughterhouses in several countries that produced not halal-certified and low-grade meat from a variety of animals. This scandal was a setback on Malaysia’s goal to become one of the world’s main halal meat exporters, which is a multi-billion dollar business.

An international drugs gang has attempted to import cocaine and heroin worth millions of pounds hidden in consignments of fruit and vegetables from the Netherlands. Port authorities discovered drugs with a street value of £40 mln when they intercepted four shipments destined for the north of England but…

Scammers are duping Canadians out of tens of thousands of dollars with the promise of new shipping containers — and they're bringing down legitimate companies with them.

A team of researchers from India and the UK develop two devices that can detect adulteration in the prized long-grained rice

Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit: Susanne Kuehne

Food forgery cases keep raising great concerns about consumers’ health and safety all over the world. The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply in Brazil prohibited sales of nine brands of fake olive oil. A criminal organization sold soybean oil as extra virgin olive oil under fictitious labels. All oils sold under these brands are being pulled from the market and destroyed. Several Brazilian agencies were working together on this case, including the Consumer Protection Police (Decon).

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is working to identify and mitigate risks in the food supply chain so that Canadians are protected from food misrepresentation, which is a common form of food fraud.

Sharjah is the third largest and third most populous city in the United Arab Emirates. This week, Sharjah Customs recently seized an illegal shipment of crystal methamphetamine, weighing 123kg. The shipment, which was coming through a sea port, was hidden at the bottom of a refrigerated container loaded…

A Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) investigtion report has recently exposed that the honey sold by some of the major Indian brands like Patanjali and Dabur is adulterated.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Office of Field Operations (OFO) at the Pharr International Bridge cargo facility intercepted alleged methamphetamine and heroin worth $2,987,000 in a commercial shipment of fresh carrots arriving from Mexico. “This interception of hard narcotics in the commercial…

Find records of fraud such as those discussed in this column and more in the Food Fraud Database. Image credit: Susanne Kuehne

Herbs remain a target for fraudsters. The latest investigation of sage samples by the Institute of Global Food Security (IGFS) at Queen’s University Belfast used a combination of spectroscopic and chemometric methods to check whether sage contained 100% of the actual herb. One quarter of samples from the UK included unapproved (fortunately, no hazardous) bulk material, such as tree leaves, some in significant concentrations of more than half of the product.

The seizures of large quantities of drugs at seaports have been on the rise worldwide. The increase in shipping operations, coupled with large container ships doubling in size in the past couple of years, has provided an attractive mode of transport for drug traffickers. African ports are subject to this…

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized nearly $3 million in methamphetamine and heroin at a Texas crossing Tuesday. Officials report the 142 pounds of drugs were stashed in a shipment of carrots.

Three food processing plants in Mississippi, raided by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency last year, were found to have also paid workers below the minimum wage and one plant hired a child.

Four Singapore companies have been fined in the past month, being accused of illegally importing food products. All of the firms had penalties set in court. In October, CCL Impex Pte Ltd. was fined S$3,600 (US$2,700) for illegally importing fresh fruits, vegetables and processed food for sale. In…

Europol, the European police authority, estimates that up to 15% of pesticides are unapproved or counterfeit, resulting an annual impact of more than $6.5 billion on the legitimate pesticide industry. It is often unknown what ingredients are in these counterfeit products. Such substances, often sold online, can pose serious health and environmental risks. During the first half of 2020, Europol has seized a record amount of unapproved pesticides. Profit margins for criminals are very high due to relatively low production costs for pesticides. Criminals avoid the tedious, expensive and lengthy approval processes which are usually contributing significantly to the pesticides’ costs.

A few weeks ago there was a million-dollar fraud case in the Austrian fruit trade: 460 tons of apples of Czech origin were offered on the market as Austrian goods. Imprint LLC, based in Neutal in Burgenland, has been fighting this type of fraud for many years. Managing Director Bernd Bodiselitsch…

Last Sunday, the Philippines Bureau of Customs destroyed about P215 million (€2.25 mln) worth of smuggled cigarettes that were seized. Three 40-footer containers of illegally imported vegetables, such as onions, were also destroyed at a rendering facility in Porac, Pampanga on Friday. According to…

Two stolen fermentation tanks — worth more than $40,000 — have turned up in local scrap yards. The massive tanks turned up at separate yards, and one is more damaged than the other.

The National Chamber of Pineapple Producers and Exporters (CANAPEP) has requested that the authorities of the Ministry of Finance and Public Security scan 100% of the containers loaded with fresh and industrial pineapple that the country exports, regardless of the destination port, to prevent these…

Global food supply chains are complex and therefore quite vulnerable to errors or fraudulent activity. A company in Chile repackaged and falsely labeled cheap raspberries from China, reselling them as top-level organic Chilean raspberries in Canada. These raspberries were linked to a norovirus outbreak in Canada, sickening hundreds of people. A whistleblower complaint helped to uncover this fraudulent scheme that posed a significant risk to human health.

As a tasty source of Vitamin C, B6, antioxidants, iron and more, elderberries have been a growing part of the latest health, immune boosting and wellness trends. Currently, the demand exceeds the supply for elderberries. For the past four to five years, this growth in popularity has been inviting adulteration of elderberry with other dark berries such as blueberries, as well as dyes, black rice and other materials. According to the Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program, such fraud can be detected by a variety of chromatographic methods.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers assigned to the Nogales Port of Entry in Arizona seized 800 pounds of methamphetamine and fentanyl being smuggling into the United States from Mexico. This sets a new record for the Nogales Port of Entry.

Abbotsford police are asking for the public to keep their eyes peeled for a $275,000 blueberry harvester that was stolen from a farm recently. 

In January 2017, Chilean Customs inspectors acted on a tip from a whistleblower: The country’s prized crop of raspberries was under threat. Inspectors raided the offices of Frutti di Bosco, a little-known fruit trading company on the second floor of a tower block in downtown Santiago. The files, company…

Fake honey is an enormous economical burden on beekeepers and consumers around the world. Adulteration methods are becoming more and more sophisticated. Besides the old-fashioned scams of real honey getting diluted or replaced by syrup, new tricks show up, for example pollen getting blended into syrup, chemical alteration of syrup to confuse tests, fake honey traveling through a number of countries to mask its country of origin, or a combination of these methods. Since the adulterated honey does not pose a risk to consumer’s health, government enforcement to detect and punish honey adulteration has not been very strong. So far, authenticity tests are mostly left to the private sector and the honey industry.