Prevention of fraud

The market for organic food is growing rapidly in Europe, North America and Asia. The flow of trade is becoming more international and there is a shortage in the supply of various commodities. This leads to a situation where those who do not take the organic requirements seriously are tempted to enter the lucrative market.

Fraud is a phenomenon that can never be completely abolished in our society. Likewise, the organic market, which has currently the best quality management system of the whole food market, cannot completely prevent fraud. Every detection of a fraud case contributes to the improvement of organic certification because its quality assurance system is adaptive. The key to success is cross border communication among inspection and certification bodies, trade companies, label organisations and authorities.

Analysing known fraud cases, identifying the reasons and introducing preventive measures were among the aims of the 60 experts from organic trade businesses, organic certification bodies and the competent authorities who met in FiBL in Frick, Switzerland on 2 and 3 October 2007.

Key documents

• Report on the workshop on September 14, 2009 in Italy (337 KB)
• Documents of the Workshop of October 2 and 3, 2007
• Press release of October 8, 2007: More Security in the Organic Certification
• Project info 'prevention of fraud' at fibl.org