Fake Food: Who are the main criminals behind it?

We regularly hear about criminals behind pirated materials such as DVDs, music, and Video materials. These criminals are said to be largely poor and live in developing countries, principally from China and Columbia. Similarly, whenever the issue of fake food is being raised, accusing fingers also tend to be pointed at small food retailers.

It is assumed that fake food is largely circulated by small food retailers because these retailers do not have enough resources to get food supply very cheaply from suppliers. Large food retailers are believed not to be very much involved in fake food because they have the resources to coerce food suppliers to get genuine food supplies cheap from them. In contrast, small food retailers do not have this bargaining power to buy genuine food supplies cheap from the suppliers. They trade on very narrow margins. Those who want to compete with large food retailers therefore must cut corners in order to compete effectively, which might include buying fake food from criminals and selling them as genuine food.

Evidence suggests, however, that large food retailers are more likely to be responsible for circulating fake food to consumers than small food retailers. Earlier this year, for example, the largest food retailers in the United Kingdom including Tesco, Asda and Mollison were caught selling horse meat as beef meat. It is certain that millions of consumers must have bought this adulterated food product from the retailers before the scandal. Although the retailers denied having any knowledge of this deceit, the revelation demonstrates how consumers who may try to avoid buying fake food from small food retailers can easily buy such food from so-called trusted retailers.

There are also other examples involving the selling of adulterated food as genuine food by large food retailers. Some regular olive oil for example is marketed on supermarket shelves as extra virgin olive oil, non-Italian variety of olive oil is sold as Italian variety, some fake fish is sold as either red snapper or tuna, while coffee ingredients are diluted with coffee husks, roasted corn, glucose, potatoes flour, and maltodextrins.

Establishing that any of this food is not real before buying it is problematic. How can we establish for example that the olive oil we want to buy is regular olive oil but branded as extra virgin olive oil? The answer is that we cannot know even after we have bought and cooked with the oil at home. Also how can we determine that an apple which is being sold as organic apple is not an organic apple but a non organic apple? Like the previous example, we cannot tell the differences between the two fruit. Both the organic and non organic apple fruit will look similar when put together, and a consumer cannot tell the difference between them. The only means of telling them apart will be to analyse the fruit samples in the laboratory. The non organic apple will show traces of chemicals or pesticides but the organic apple will not show these signs.

Returning to where we began, the view that selling of fake food is largely perpetuated by small food retailers is flawed. As you have seen from above, large food retailers seem to sell unauthentic food more than small food retailers. We may try but cannot be able to avoid buying fake food altogether.