Food Fraud and Mitigation Tools

Tender description

Part 1: Background to Defra’s Food Authenticity Programme 1.1 Defra’s vision is for a world leading food and farming system. Maintaining a resilient and secure supply chain, and competitive and thriving food industry, coupled with ensuring consumer confidence in the food chain is integral to this vision. Food authenticity - knowing what food is, how it is produced, where it comes from and that it is correctly labelled – is a key part of this. Defra’s Food Authenticity programme focuses on the development of analytical methods to verify food authenticity and compliance with food labelling legislation to provide tools to tackle food fraud. 1.2 Food fraud, according to the European Commission, covers cases where “there is a violation of EU food law, which is committed intentionally to pursue an economic or financial gain through consumer deception”. In a rapidly changing landscape, it is important to understand global influences, dynamics and drivers impacting on the occurrence of food fraud and how these might change from a social, economic, environmental, and political perspective. Focus of the research should be UK but within a global context. Part 2: Aim 2.1 Defra requires a review of food fraud, with a specific focus on identifying or predicting likely food fraud trends in the short to medium term, coupled with an assessment of current and emerging food fraud mitigation tools and techniques, and how these might be used to inform agri-food policy development. The review shall signpost to areas that require additional input (e.g. knowledge, data, etc.) in order to meet future food fraud challenges. Part 3: Objectives The research is divided into two phases; [1] Food Fraud Drivers and Trends in the Short to Medium Term, and, [2] Mitigation Tools and Systems – Mapping and Evaluation The Contractor shall therefore carry out a review to: 3.1 Understand the global drivers of food fraud impacting on the UK, how these may vary and how this may have