Food fraud in insecure times: challenges and opportunities for reducing food fraud in Africa

Innovation to limit seafood fraud post-COVID-19

“…Drawing on two cast study innovations presented at the 2021 World Fisheries Congress “Sustainability” stream, we show how they can be used, either coupled or adopted alone, to improve the sustainability, traceability and resilience of global and local fisheries supply chains. This is particularly pertinent under the landscape of COVID-19, which can exacerbate the risk of food fraud (Onyeaka et al 2022 ) and increase the need for food traceability (Quevedo-Silva et al 2022 ). For example, emerging scientific technologies to test and validate seafood catches based on genetic or biochemical tags play pivotal role to ground-truth the origins of many seafood commodities.…”

“…The COVID-19 pandemic increased the vulnerability of global seafood supply chains and likely exacerbated fraud and other illegal activities that were already occurring (Love et al 2021 ; Onyeaka et al 2022 ). In response, many small-scale operators have been prompted to seek out new ways of doing business to promote social and environmental values related to transparency and traceability throughout the supply chain (Witter and Stoll 2017 ).…”

“…Further, in 2020 the FAO’s assessment concluded that fishing supply chains are long and complex, and many points of opportunity along the supply chain are opaque, making them vulnerable to fraudulent activity (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 2020 ). Worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chains lacking in transparency may become even more fractured and vulnerable to fraud affecting fishers, industry and consumers (Onyeaka et al 2022 ; Love et al 2021 ; Mausch et al 2020 ). As such, this global crisis provided an opportunity to review and adapt supply chains (Amos et al 2022 ).…”

“…The Summit builds on the SDGs bringing issues such as nutrition; access to food; sustainable food production; building resilient food supply chains; and limiting food waste sharply into focus to strengthen food systems, together (United Nations 2021 ). These goals are particularly important amidst the COVID-19 pandemic where the pre-existing opportunity for fraud is exacerbated (Love et al 2021 ; Onyeaka et al 2022 ). Disappointingly, the Summit did not broaden out to “food fraud” in its remit, thus, the role of industry is even more central to building sustainable, traceable, resilient fisheries supply chains.…”

Food fraud and mitigating strategies of UK food supply chain during COVID-19

“…This shows the scale and extent of food fraud in the global food system during this critical period. Onyeaka et al (2022a ; 2022b) also highlighted that food smuggling, production of counterfeit alcohol products and artificial enhancement of fish and meat using formalin were frequently reported in Africa.…”