Food Safety: Food Defense & Food Fraud

What is food defense and food fraud?

First and foremost we need to understand what food defense and food fraud is. Let’s take a look at their definition.

Food defense is activities associated with protecting the nation's food supply from deliberate or intentional acts of contamination or tampering (FDA2014). It is because of ideologically motivated intentional adulteration that makes the food injurious to health.

Food fraud is deception of consumers using food products, ingredients and packaging and includes substitutions, unapproved enhancement, misbranding, counterfeiting, stolen goods or others for economic gain of the seller. (GFSI, 2014)

Thus, food fraud which is economically motivated intentional adulteration that may or may not make the food injurious to health. Hence, some food fraud issues may overlap with the definition of food defense whilst others may be a food quality issue.