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What can law do to stop food fraud?

The FAO Development Law Service (LEGN), in partnership with the FAO Food Systems and Food Safety Division (ESF) and the Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy of the University of California, has published a new FAO Background Paper: “International and national regulatory strategies to counter food fraud”.

This publication tackles a topic on everyone’s lips these days. From mixing rapeseed oil in olive oil to mislabelling fish and adding colouring agents to spices, food fraud has beset governments and consumers alike for millennia. The law has always played a part in combatting food fraud - even the Code of Hammurabi refers to wine fraud - with variations that have reflected the sensibilities and interests of the time.

The legal strategies against food fraud discussed in this publication are accordingly varied. Food fraud is addressed in light of the most recent thinking and conception of the phenomenon, i.e. the intentional deception of a customer about the quality and/or contents of the foods they wish to purchase, such act being done to obtain an undue advantage, most often economic, for the fraudster.

The vastness and complexity of food fraud and the variety of possible regulatory approaches available to deal with it coherently can be challenging for national governments. To respond to this challenge, this publication provides useful guidance on the existing international regulatory regimes and on the legal strategies that can be introduced at national and regional level. It identifies and analyses some of the regulatory approaches to food fraud that countries have chosen and pays attention to the role of the private sector in food fraud regulation. As such, it aims to put more tools into the governments’ toolboxes to help them reduce food fraud and increase consumers’ trust in food systems.
 
The publication is available in English at: https://doi.org/10.4060/cb9035en

For more information, please contact: [email protected]