The UK's Food Standards Agency (FSA)'s National Food Crime Unit and Food Standards Scotland (FSS)’s Scottish Food Crime and Incidents Unit have jointly produced an assessment of food crime threats to the UK.
The Food Crime Strategic Assessment examines areas of the food supply chain which may be vulnerable to food crime. It also identifies emerging threats that need to be addressed.
The assessment found that most food crime relates to two broad activities—either selling something of little or no value to the food chain as edible and marketable, or selling passable food, drink, or feed as a product with greater volume or more desirable attributes. In practice, this could include replacing ingredients with cheaper and inferior materials, falsely extending use-by dates, or deliberately marketing unsafe products as being fit for human consumption.