Jul
News
Food fraud trends in 2025: the risks businesses should be watching
High-risk product groups, the four common forms of food fraud, the trends seen in 2025 and the role of the laboratory in controlling that risk.
As food supply chains become steadily more global, food fraud remains one of the largest challenges facing manufacturers, importers, distributors and testing laboratories worldwide. Summary reporting from the Food Authenticity Network (FAN) shows several notable trends in 2025, and points to a growing need for quality control, traceability and product authentication.
What is food fraud?
Food fraud is the deliberate alteration, adulteration, substitution, mislabelling or counterfeiting of food for economic gain. Unlike food-safety incidents, which arise unintentionally, food fraud is carried out on purpose and can have serious consequences for:
- Consumer health
- Brand reputation
- Export operations
- Regulatory compliance
- Transparency across the global food supply chain
The highest-risk product categories
Data from regulators and monitoring bodies shows several product groups remaining on the high-risk list for food fraud.
1. Milk and dairy products
- Dilution of raw material
- Addition of undeclared ingredients
- Mislabelling of origin
- Alteration of fat or protein content
2. Meat and poultry
- Species mislabelling
- Substitution with lower-value material
- Incorrect origin information
3. Seafood
- Species substitution
- Incorrect capture or aquaculture information
- False declaration of the area of origin
4. Edible oils and fats
- Blending with cheaper material
- Mislabelling of quality grade
- Inaccurate declaration of composition
5. Food supplements
- Ingredients that do not match the declaration
- Presence of banned substances or undeclared actives
- Active content below the stated level
The four most common forms of food fraud
1. Mislabelling
The label does not reflect the true nature of the product: wrong origin, wrong composition, wrong type of raw material.
2. Dilution
Cheaper components are added to reduce production cost — water added to milk, low-grade oil blended into premium oil.
3. Substitution
High-value material is replaced with lower-value material while still being sold at the premium price.
4. Addition of unapproved components
Substances that are not food ingredients, or that have not been declared, are used to gain a commercial advantage and increase margin.
Food fraud trends in 2025
Recent reports show the number of food-fraud alerts rising in many countries. The main drivers include:
- Volatility in raw-material prices
- Supply-chain disruption
- Competitive pressure on price
- Growth in cross-border e-commerce
- Increasingly complex supply chains
Businesses therefore need to strengthen authentication and quality control from the point of incoming materials onwards.
The role of the laboratory
Testing laboratories play an important part in detecting and preventing food fraud through a range of modern analytical techniques.
Chemical analysis
- Nutritional composition
- Quality parameters
- Impurities and undeclared substances
Chromatographic analysis
Common techniques include GC-MS, LC-MS/MS, HPLC and GC-FID, used to detect anomalous components and to verify product authenticity.
DNA analysis
- Species identification
- Biological traceability
- Detection of raw-material substitution
Stable isotope analysis
- Verification of geographic origin
- Detection of blending
- Authenticity checks on high-value products
What businesses should do to reduce food-fraud risk
To build a safe and transparent supply chain, a business should assess supply-chain risk periodically, establish a food fraud prevention programme, define supplier selection and evaluation criteria, strengthen traceability systems, carry out authenticity testing on a regular basis, and apply international standards such as FSSC 22000, BRCGS, IFS and ISO 22000.
Conclusion
Food fraud is not only a compliance issue; it bears directly on brand reputation, customer trust and the resilience of the entire supply chain. As the methods used grow more sophisticated and harder to detect through 2025, investment in testing, authentication and traceability becomes a decisive factor in protecting product quality, meeting market requirements and sustaining competitiveness over the long term.
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