Have you been the victim of food fraud? Are there foods you won’t eat for fear of being tricked? As evidenced by Europe’s recent horsemeat scandal — in which scores of products labeled as “beef” were found to contain up to 100 percent horse meat —together with arrests last spring of Chinese traders who were allegedly peddling rat meat as lamb, there’s still considerable mystery around where a lot of our food originates.
“Unfortunately, controlling the amount of fraud that occurs daily in the food industry is next to impossible,” said Michael Roberts, a professor of food law and policy at UCLA and director of the Center for Food Law and Policy. “Almost anything can be adulterated in some way,” he added, “either to persuade consumers to buy something for their health, or by diluting it to save money on the supplier end.”
Seafood made headlines earlier this year when Oceana, an international nonprofit dedicated to ocean conservation, issued a report announcing that one-third of the fish sampled during a nationwide survey was incorrectly labeled.
