Evaluation and deconstruction of fraud incidents, vulnerabilities, and social networks in organic ‘hotchpotch’ supply chains : report on fraud incident reports, vulnerability assessments, and social network analysis in the Dutch organic potatoes’, carrots’, and onions’ supply chains

Summary

This study aims to create a greater understanding of (1) existing unlawful food fraud activity, (2) food fraud vulnerabilities and (3) related network structures within the organic potatoes’, carrots’, and onions’ supply chains. Three types of methodology were applied to meet the aims: (1) an analysis of historical prevalence and patterns of food fraud in the organic sector in general and in the three selected organic chains, (2) a food fraud vulnerability analysis of supply chain actors of the three specific organic supply chains in the Netherlands, and (3) a social network analysis to identify structural characteristics of the three organic supply chains in the Netherlands. Incident analysis using the Decernis food fraud database revealed 201 incidents with organic foods between 2004 and 2021, 47 of which had a food safety component. Most targeted products were plant-based. Key products were fruits (42 cases), cereals and pulses (38 cases),spices/herbs/flavourings (20 cases), vegetables (19 cases), processed food products (14 cases: juice, oil,jam, infant food, tomato paste, wine, etc.), seeds (13 cases), and coconut products (12 cases). Only two organic potatoes’, one organic carrots’, and two organic onions’ incidents were identified in the database. Food fraud vulnerability assessments revealed that the vulnerabilities of the organic potatoes’, carrots’, and onions’ chains to food fraud were fairly like each other, at a low to moderate level. This level was comparableto the level of the previously examined organic bananas’ chains and less vulnerable than the previously examined organic olive oil, eggs’, and pork chains. This all aligns with the low frequency of fraud incidents in the three organic food chains in the Decernis food fraud database. Because of the similarity in food fraud vulnerability level of the three chains under investigation, one supply chain, the organic potato supply chain,was selected for social network analysis. This analysis revealed three distinctive groups among the actors in this supply chain: (A) a group with many contacts within the potato growers’ group, (B) a group with many contacts across all the organic potato supply chain nodes, and (C) a group with mainly contacts outside the chain. The actors of the three groups have distinctively different interactions and would, hence, also have potentially different roles in food fraud events. Socially key actors could also be identified. Although the foodfraud vulnerabilities in the Dutch organic potato supply chain are limited, the social network analysis provides very useful information for future work. Given that this is the first time such an approach has been taken in a national food fraud context, identification, and visualisation of key actors from a social networkpoint of view in this particular chain will be useful for comparison with other food supply chain networks in future research.