Food Fraud: Causes, Consequences, and Deterrence Strategies

Abstract

Food fraud represents a serious threat to the integrity of the global agri-food marketing system and has received considerable attention by policy makers, academics, and the public at large. This review presents the conditions that enable fraudulent activity in agri-food supply chains (such as asymmetric information, imperfect certification processes, supply chain complexity, and weak monitoring and enforcement systems) and discusses recent efforts to document and deter food fraud and the growing theoretical and empirical literature on the economics of food fraud. The article concludes by identifying some gaps in the literature and provides suggestions for future research.