Food fraud, simply put, is the selling of food products with a misleading label, description or promise.
Throughout history, dubious traders have looked to profit from substandard, less desirable or counterfeit products. From chalk in flour to horsemeat sold as beef – food fraud is as old as industrial food production itself. Tricks of the trade have included colouring vegetables with copper[i]; diluting milk with water[ii]; substituting herbs for other plants[iii]; and bulking up lamb curries with beef or chicken[iv].
