Food fraud – a brief review of the scientific literature
The Alliance project aims to provide a comprehensive framework to improve traceability and reinforce interoperability in the Food Supply Chain (FSC) for quality-labeled foods through the use of blockchain technology in order to encourage evidence-based decision-making for the involved stakeholder.
In the initial phase of this project, it was significant to analyze the existing literature, and acquire initial results regarding food fraud in the FSC. More precisely, as shown in Figure 1, 2,331 were obtained from a valid scientific research engine (Web of Science) and have been further processed through the use of Bibliometrix library in the RStudio.
Figure 1: Literature Review Process
Results showed that there is an increasing interest from the scientific community towards the term “food fraud”, leading to a higher number of annual publications for the examined period 2003-2023. The increase in publications in 2013 is not a spontaneous event, but something that can be justified by the Horsemeat scandal outbreak and EFSA’s report on pesticides[AA1] . Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be influential towards food fraud issues, regarding the conservation of strict hygiene protocols throughout the whole value chain.
Figure 2: Trend of annual scientific production on food fraud
This highlights the need for the implementation of innovative solutions, which will ensure that all parts of the food value chain are aware of the state of the product at any given moment in time. Additionally, consumers will be able to access all the relevant information regarding a food product before buying it, in order to easily confirm that it is completely safe for consumption by themselves and their families.
Providing a general context of the literature review results, it has been observed that there was a clear shift to the points of interest from the scientific community in the last ten years, which has prompted a reorientation of scientific investigation on food fraud and its evaluation in FSCs. Quality, authenticity, food safety, and supply chain monitoring were not issues of such high importance before 2017. Prior to 2017, all keywords and trends were concerned with biochemistry and food science, as opposed to product quality and the eradication of food fraud in the FSCs. In 2019, there was a move toward a more comprehensive strategy for raising food safety standards, which offers more information on how to put new technology for monitoring into practice. The greatest outcome of this literature review is to ensure that the ALLIANCE project is in line with the existing academic approaches and ameliorate its findings with the use of the existing literature.
The literature review analysis provides the theoretical framework within which the ALLIANCE members will work on. On top of that, the project team has carried out semi-structured interviews with agricultural experts and supply chain managers, to identify the amelioration points of each value chain and propose feasible solutions that will be implemented as part of the project.
The specific solutions are being tailored to each of the seven demonstrators. All of the value chains selected for the demonstators refer to products of high quality value and importance, either protected by a geographical indication of origin, or certified as organic products. Each of the demonstrators has been organized to closely assess all the involved steps and procedures of each value chain in the ALLIANCE project.
Stay tuned for updates on the demonstrators over the coming months.