Beating Food Fraud Criminals - Some Food Safety Authority of Ireland Successes
John Coady,
Chief Audit & Investigations Manager,
Food Safety Authority of Ireland
Criminals involved in class A drugs are becoming more involved in food crime/fraud because the penalties if caught are less severe” – Bart de Buck, Europol. To combat food crime the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) has established a multi-agency Food Fraud Task Force (FFTF) comprising of scientists, regulators, police and customs officials. The ISO definition for food fraud is the deliberate and intentional substitution, addition, tampering, or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients, or food packaging; or false or misleading statements made about a product, for economic gain. Criminals in the pursuit of economic gain pay no regard to the protection of the health or interests of consumers. The absence of traceability for counterfeit food poses the greatest threat examples of which I will include in my presentation.Regulators, scientists, industry and the EU Commission are fighting back. I will present some of the strategies being used by the Irish authorities to tackle food fraud and the successes we have had to date. I will share the challenges that criminal prosecutions pose to scientists and regulators in the pursuit of conviction in the courts of justice for the perpetrators.The EU Commission are drafting a revised Regulation which will require Competent Authorities to include in their official controls identification of “violations perpetrated by fraudulent deceptive practices”. We will need to be in a position through the use of science and investigative techniques to determine the nature and extent of these “fraudulent deceptive practices.
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