Food could contain unmarked allergens like peanuts or even sawdust as safety standards drop, a food fraud expert warned.
With imports entering Europe no longer checked on our behalf at the Dutch port of Rotterdam, and the access lost to shared intelligence on food fraud and to labs able to detect counterfeit ingredients, the UK's "the first line of protection for food coming over the border" has "disappeared", Professor Chris Elliott told The Sunday Times.
Food crime includes misrepresenting the quality, safety, origin or freshness of a product, swapping ingredients for an inferior substance, and including substances not on the label to "lower costs or fake a higher quality", according to the Food Standards Agency (FSA). The government agency says it "can be seriously harmful to consumers, food businesses and the wider food industry".
