Food fraud detection and reporting by food control officers in Finland

ABSTRACT

We studied food fraud detection and the reporting of suspected cases using a questionnaire survey and interviews with Finnish food control officers (FCOs). In total, 95 FCOs responded to the questionnaire, and 17 were interviewed. We found that even though many respondents had either suspected (69.2%) or detected (43.4%) food fraud or other food-related crime during the past five years, 46.8% thought they had no realistic chance of detecting food fraud during inspections. Challenges raised by the FCOs we interviewed included inadequate resources (8/17) and difficulties in inspecting documents or establishing their authenticity (14/17). Moreover, many interviewees highlighted difficulties in assessing whether to inform the police about a suspected case (7/17), and 62% (18/29) of respondents who had detected fraud had not reported it to the police. Training in food fraud detection, increased resources and guidelines on reporting suspected food fraud would improve food fraud detection and harmonize reporting.

KEYWORDS:

• Food fraud
• food crime
• food control
• inspection
• detection

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the food control officers who participated in the questionnaire and interviews, along with those who helped us develop and pilot the questionnaire and the interview study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contribution

JJ: Conceptualization, investigation, data curation, formal analysis, writing – original draft, writing – review & editing. JL: Conceptualization, writing – review & editing, supervision, funding acquisition.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09603123.2023.2236977

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Finland (Makera grant number 478/03.01.02/2018); the Finnish Foundation of Veterinary Research; and the Finnish Cultural Foundation.