Tackling Fraudsters with Global Strategies to Expose Fraud in the Food Chain

Deliberate adulteration of food products is as old as food processing and production systems. Food adulteration is occurring increasingly often today. With globalization and complex distribution systems, adulteration may have a far-reaching impact and even adverse consequences on well-being. The means of the international community to confront and solve food fraud today are scattered and largely ineffective. A collective approach is needed to identify all stakeholders in the food supply chain, certify and qualify them, exclude those failing to meet applicable standards, and track food in a real time. This review provides some background into the drivers of fraudulent practices (economically motivated adulteration, food-industry perspectives, and consumers' perceptions of fraud) and discusses a wide range of the currently available technologies for detecting food adulteration followed by multivariate pattern recognition tools. Food chain integrity policies are discussed. Future directions in research, concerned not only with food adulterers but also with food safety and climate change, may be useful for researchers in developing interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary problems.