Dr Seamus O'Reilly of Cork University Business School at University College Cork (UCC) outlines vulnerabilities in the food chain and outlines how the industry can protect itself.

In the aftermath of high profile issues around food contamination and authenticity, the industry as a whole is taking steps to address vulnerabilities that it currently faces and ones that may be a potential issue in the future. One of the experts in this area is Dr Seamus O’Reilly of Cork University Business School, UCC. Seamus has always had a particular interest in the food industry and, over a 25-year academic career, has worked closely with industry in the area of supply chain management. Since 2002 he has designed and delivered lean supply chain management programmes from Certificate to Postgraduate level for practitioners in multi-national and Irish owned companies spanning industries such as Food and Drink, Pharmaceuticals, Medtec, Electronics and Services. Currently Seamus is a Senior Lecturer in Cork University Business School, UCC, where he is Academic Director of Supply Chain Management programmes. He is also Academic Director of the part-time Diploma in Food Manufacturing Management offered by the Food Industry Training Unit in UCC.

Seamus and his colleagues have been looking at the issue of food fraud and defense, specifically from a supply chain management perspective. As he points out, while there has been quite a lot of focus on the development of analytical techniques to assess food authenticity, as well as the underlying conditions giving rise to food fraud and threat, other key areas have been somewhat overlooked. “There has been less attention on the management frameworks required,” Seamus explains, “For example, how does risk assessment, allocation of resources, and development and deployment of countermeasures fit with established enterprise risk management and supply chain governance mechanisms?”

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Two of the key potential vulnerability issues currently facing the food industry globally are food fraud and terrorism and, while both arise from intentional acts, the motivations and executions are different. “ Acts motivated to cause harm, including terrorism and sabotage from disgruntled employees, are often committed within the firm,” Seamus explains. This in turn means that various threats are handled differently. On-site measures may involve a Threat Assessment and Critical Control Points (TACCP) plan. “They cover issues such as manufacturing plant and transportation security, IT security and employee background checks.” For food fraud, the focus tends to be upstream in the supply chain. A Vulnerability Assessment and Critical Control Points (VACCP) plan can be used in this instance. “It widens the scope by seeking to identify the vulnerable points in a supply chain.” This has led to significant advances in analytical techniques - such as liquid chromatography, infrared spectroscopy, and hyphenated mass spectroscopy - to assess the authenticity of food products.

When it comes to food fraud, the island of Ireland is somewhat ahead of the curve in addressing these issues. “The island is considered to be among those pioneering a response to food fraud. However, we can always learn from others,” Seamus says. One example he highlights is the Netherlands, which has had a food crime unit  since the early 2000s. “They have built a strong interdisciplinary team, including not just food scientists and those with traditional policing skills but also accountants, logisticians, journalists, lawyers, forensic auditors and data analysts,” he explains. An organisation in Denmark has similar legal powers to Ireland’s Criminal Asset Bureau (CAB) which allows the confiscation of, as Seamus puts it, “ill-gotten gains” and imposition of financial penalties. The United States of America has been paying attention to food defense for a number of years too. In 2004 the U.S. Department of Homeland Security established the National Center for Food Protection and Defense, headquartered at the University of Minnesota and there is a Food Fraud Initiative in the University of Michigan. “Here on the island of Ireland, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland has established a Food Fraud Task Force while in the UK the Food Standards Agency set up a National Food Crime Unit,” Seamus says. “The Institute of Global Food Security, Queen’s University Belfast has contributed to the analytical techniques and instruments to detect food fraud.”

It is key that food bodies, and indeed countries, work together to combat threats. The EU Fraud Network facilitates the sharing of information among agencies and there is also OPSON, a joint INTERPOL-Europol organisation. Established in 2011, OPSON organises annual operations involving joint efforts of police, customs, national food regulatory bodies, and partners from the private sector. One OPSON investigation into fraudulent practice in seafood found illicit practices including species substitution and fraudulently selling tuna intended for canning as fresh. “The tuna intended for canning was illegally treated with chemical substances to give the misleading impression of its freshness,” Seamus explains, adding. “A conservative estimate of the cost of this fraud to the European industry was put at €200m.”

So what can the industry do to help combat this threat? Seamus believes that the level of collaboration should increase and that the industry as a whole needs to be looking for the next vulnerable area. In short, it’s like detective work; collecting crumbs of information currently available to work out where to focus on next. “We need to look more closely at the conditions that give rise to fraud to prioritise products to test, and priorities will shift over time as ‘conditions’ change. That’s why horizon scanning has a key role to play,” Seamus says. “This includes data on weather conditions, price hikes, shifts in supply and demand, etc.” The threat to the industry is always changing and those within it need to be continually adapting. Collaboration, research advancements and constant horizon scanning may combine to form the best means to fight against food fraud and other vulnerabilities across the industry and beyond.


This article is based on a safefood-funded research project.  The final research project is available at www.safefood.eu/Publications/Research-reports.

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