Types of Food Fraud

• Substituting a product with something different, that is often inferior.

Examples- using horse meat instead of beef, or labeling Pollock as cod.

• Adulterating a food product by mixing in other ingredients or elements and passing it off as a pure product.

Dilution- The act of decreasing the concentration of the main liquid ingredient. This is usually done by adding water.

Examples- adding sugar syrup to honey, adding sunflower oil to olive oil, adding fillers to ground spices, or adding apple juice to pomegranate juice.

• Making false claims or misleading statements to mislead consumers on the benefit of a food product.

Examples- food products marketed as being "clinically and scientifically proven to boost the immune system."

• Mislabeling a food as something it is not or falsely declaring a country of origin.

Examples- labeling farmed salmon as wild salmon, labeling apples as organic when they are not certified, labeling tomatoes as a "Product of Canada" when they are from another country, or providing a false net quantity declaration

• Concealment- The action of purposely hiding information or preventing something from being known. Examples of this include food coloring being applied to hide defects from a fruit. Or poultry with disease injected with hormones for concealment.
• Grey market production- Sales of excess unreported products.
• Unapproved enhancements- The addition of unapproved additives. Such as melamine being used as a protein enhancement

(Canadian Food Inspection Agency , 2019)