Saturday hashtag: #LabelFraud – WhoWhatWhy

Welcome to Hashtag Saturday, a weekly space for broader context.

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Label fraud poses significant risks to public health, public trust, and economic integrity. Most people understand that all product information (labels, expiration dates, recyclability, ingredient lists, etc.) is designed to deceive, not inform, but this dynamic has been taken to the next level with food fraud: Economically Motivated Adulteration (EMA). It is defined as the deliberate substitution, addition, falsification, or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients, or food packaging, or false or misleading statements about a product, for economic gain. For example, manufacturers may add a cheaper vegetable oil to more expensive olive oil, but label the product as 100% olive oil. EMA also occurs with other products, including pet food. You can find a database of violators here.

Food fraud is difficult to detect because it is designed in secret and goes largely unchecked.

This problem has increased tenfold since 2020. Recent estimates suggest that at least 1% of global trade is affected, at a cost of up to $40 billion per year.

It is clear that industry-sponsored regulation is a failure.

Food fraud can lead to health problems and even death. Examples include heavy metal poisoning from adulterated spices and allergic reactions to hidden and substituted ingredients containing food allergens.

The Fair Label Act is an attempt to address the problems with meat and poultry, but both sectors have the same enforcement problem.

Labeling fraud is also a problem for non-food products such as clothing, furniture, automobiles, diapers, cosmetics and many other consumer goods. Materials and manufacturing processes are either adulterated or simply not listed.

The European Union leads the way in some sectors. The EU Textile Regulation requires manufacturers and retailers to properly inform consumers about the composition of products; violators face legal repercussions and/or financial claims. When it comes to enforcement, the UK and EU tend to be better than the US across all regulatory bodies.

The FDA is planning new food labeling regulations that will go into effect in 2027 and even add warning labels to foods. Ironically, the U.S. government is also pushing for labels to be modeled after nutrition labels, for your internet.

All these labels are very good communication tools, but the government cannot enforce existing regulations. It would seem that legislation to strengthen the enforcement of these regulations would be more effective than creating new labels.

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