Milk authenticity and fraud mitigation in dairy supply chains : a case study among dairy processors and food retailers

Summary

Food fraud is a significant and growing concern, driven by globalization of supply chains, economic opportunity, and in many cases by the low probability and severity of punishment. Therefore, now more than in the past, food fraud requires a clear strategy of prevention, detection and elimination. Food adulterations can be commercially devastating, can damage reputations as well as pose health risk for consumers. Although the evident importance of the problem, still limited knowledge and data are available on methods for the prevention or mitigation of this issue in food supply chains. Therefore, researches have started to be conducted among various food supply chains to assess new tools and strategies which may help companies in the evaluation and consequent prevention of food fraud vulnerabilities. The most vulnerable ingredients to fraud, which have been listed during the USP convention as olive oil, milk, honey and some few others have been taken as starting point in the assessment of strategies for prevention. Among the others, literature reveals that dairy products are in the top of most adulterated food products worldwide. Milk have become an easy target for fraudsters in recent years due to many factors such as: the importance of milk in human diets and the increased demand, the growth competition in the dairy market, the increasing complexity of the supply chains. In order to get deeper understanding in the authenticity of milk, the object of the present research is to acquire knowledge and define risk factors which may lead to fraud vulnerabilities in well-established dairy supply chains through the use of the SSAFE vulnerability tool. This self-assessment tool helps companies in their process of assessing vulnerabilities to food fraud and supports them in the development of specific interventions to mitigate the identified vulnerabilities. To fulfil the main research objective, two sub-objectives are developed. First a literature’s review on risk factors which can lead to potential vulnerabilities in dairy supply chains is conducted. Secondly, the SSAFE vulnerability tool is performed on a case study among dairy processors and food retailers. For the literature analysis, scientific journals were reviewed. For the assessment of fraud vulnerabilities through the case study, a quite large number of companies was contacted, of which only nine participated to the study. Even though the case study may not be fully representative of the situation of fraud vulnerabilities in well-established supply chains, some conclusions can be drawn. The outcomes of the literature analysis and the case study highlighted that the main risk factors are linked to detection methods, which are generally not enough advanced to perform authentication tests; valuable components of milk, which play an important role as economic driver for fraudster to commit fraud; fraud monitoring systems, which are not performed systematically and not well-developed for assessing fraud vulnerabilities; and law enforcements on (inter)national level since food fraud is a relatively new issue on the European political and it has never been a key priority for legislation and enforcement at European or national level. However, some differences between literature analysis and case study as well as between the two actors involved in the study have been discovered. Further details are provided in the chapters of this research.