Food fraud, including the more defined subcategory of economically motivated adulteration, is a food risk that is gaining recognition and concern. Regardless of the cause of the food risk, adulteration of food is both an industry and a government responsibility. Food safety, food fraud, and food defense incidents can create adulteration of food with public health threats. Food fraud is an intentional act for economic gain, whereas a food safety incident is an unintentional act with unintentional harm, and a food defense incident is an intentional act with intentional harm. Economically motivated adulteration may be just that-economically motivated-but the food-related public health risks are often more risky than traditional food safety threats because the contaminants are unconventional. Current intervention systems are not designed to look for a near infinite number of potential contaminants. The authors developed the core concepts reported here following comprehensive research of articles and reports, expert elicitation, and an extensive peer review. The intent of this research paper is to provide a base reference document for defining food fraud-it focuses specifically on the public health threat-and to facilitate a shift in focus from intervention to prevention. This will subsequently provide a framework for future quantitative or innovative research. The fraud opportunity is deconstructed using the criminology and behavioral science applications of the crime triangle and the chemistry of the crime. The research provides a food risk matrix and identifies food fraud incident types. This project provides a starting point for future food science, food safety, and food defense research.

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Background: Product counterfeiting is growing in scope, scale, and threat. This includes awareness of deceptive and non-deceptive counterfeiting types. (This paper does not consider copyright or digital piracy, currency counterfeiting, fraudulent documents, or artwork forgery.) In response, many organizations are focusing on product counterfeiting including INTERPOL, International Standards Organization, World Health Organization, World Customs Organization, and the U.S. Department of Justice. The goal of this research is to help brand owners and agencies efficiently select appropriate countermeasures including overt, covert and forensic packaging features, as well as functions of market monitoring, modifying supply chains, enforcement, prosecution and legislation. Methods: To understand how product counterfeiting is perceived, researched, and categorized we reviewed previous work in criminology, packaging science, behavioral science, supply chain management, economics, and business management. Results: We use this collective literature to develop a typology of product counterfeiters, counterfeiting, and offender groups. Conclusions: It is important to understand that anti-counterfeit strategies must be based on understanding the nature of the fraud and the fraudster. Developing a typology is common practice in criminology and is no less important for product counterfeiting. The concepts in this paper provide a typology to help organize a complex set of information. This assists in explaining the opportunity structure of the problem based on the type of counterfeiting, counterfeiter, and offender organization.

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The food industry is advancing at a rapid pace and consumer sensitivity to food safety scares and food fraud scandals is further amplified by rapid communication such as by social media. Academia, regulators, and industry practitioners alike struggle with an evolving issue regarding new terms and definitions including food fraud, food authenticity, food integrity, food protection, economically motivated adulteration, food crime, food security, contaminant, adulterant, and others. This research addressed some of the global need for clarification and harmonization of commonly used terminology. The 150 survey responses were received from various food‐related workgroups or committee members, communication with recognized experts, and announcements to the food industry in general. Overall food fraud was identified as a “food safety” issue (86%). The food quality and manufacturing respondents focused mainly on incoming goods and adulterant‐substances (<50%) rather than the other illegal activities such as counterfeiting, theft, gray market/diversion, and smuggling. Of the terms included to represent “intentional deception for economic gain” the respondents generally agreed with food fraud as the preferred term. Overall, the preference was 50% “food fraud,” 15% “economically motivated adulteration” EMA, 9% “food protection,” 7% “food integrity,” 5% “food authenticity,” and 2% “food crime.” It appears that “food protection” and “food integrity” are terms that cover broader concepts such as all types of intentional acts and even possibly food safety or food quality. “Food authenticity” was defined with the phrase “to ensure” so seemed to be identified as an “attribute” that helped define fraudulent acts. Practical Application Food Fraud—illegal deception for economic gain using food—is a rapidly evolving research topic and is facing confusion due to the use of different terms and definitions. This research survey presented common definitions and publication details to gain insight that could help provide clarity. The insight from this report provides guidance for others who are harmonizing terminology and setting the overall strategic direction.