The National Food Crime Unit

The National Food Crime Unit (NFCU) is a dedicated law enforcement function of the Food Standards Agency (FSA). The unit provides leadership on food crime across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The unit works closely with the Scottish Food Crime and Incidents Unit within Food Standards Scotland.

The NFCU was established in 2015 following a review of the 2013 horse meat incident. The NFCU is tasked with protecting consumers and the food industry from food crime within food supply chains. The NFCU works with the food industry to ensure that food is safe and what it says it is.

More information on the NFCU can be found on the FSA website.

What is Food Crime? 

Food crime more often referred to as food fraud can be defined as serious fraud and related criminality in food supply chains. It can be extremely harmful to consumers, food businesses and the wider food industry. Food crime can occur in various ways. It can range from isolated acts of dishonesty by individual offenders to organised illegal activity co-ordinated by criminal networks.

The National Food Crime Unit focusses its work on 7 different types of food crime: adulteration, substitution, theft, misrepresentation, illegal processing, waste diversion and document fraud.

More information on the 7 types of food crime can be found on the FSA website.

Why do I need to worry about food crime? 

Food crime can affect any food business regardless of size or sector.

Food crime is not a victimless crime and it can impact your brand’s reputation and even pose a risk to consumer safety. It can be easy to think of food crime as just people being ripped off but there can also be a link between food crime and food safety. For instance, non-allergenic ingredients could be replaced with allergenic ingredients and if not declared could have potentially devastating consequences. Food that is not fit for human consumption such as food that is out of date or has been out temperature control could be diverted back into the supply chain. It is important that all who work in the food industry are aware of food crime and risks it may pose to their business.

What should I be doing about it?

Initially it is always good to think about what you already have in place to protect your business from the risk of food crime. Earlier this year the NFCU launched its Food Fraud Resilience Self-Assessment Tool. This was designed to support food businesses in identifying the risk to their business from food crime, and outline steps that they can take to mitigate those risks.

The tool can be found on the main FSA website.

Put food crime on your agenda! Just like food safety and health and safety, the risk posed by food crime should always be something that you are considering in the day to day running of your business.

There are certain things that you need to look out for to protect your business from food crime. For example, are ingredients being sold well under market value or is there a lack of traceability records?  Have you been offered or received ingredients which do not match their description or make you question the validity of their accreditation or quality claims?

How can I report incidents of food crime? 

There are a few different ways that you to let the NFCU know about incidents of food crime.

Food Crime Confidential: 020 7276 8787

Email: foodcrime@food.gov.uk 

Online confidential reporting tool: Report a food crime

If you want to know more about food crime and what you can do to reduce the risk to your business get in touch. You can contact the unit’s Prevention team at: NFCU.Prevention@food.gov.uk