Food Fraud: Focus on Ready-to-eat Products

Atlante’s Food Fraud Observatory focuses on the risks associated with products and categories. The goal? To raise awareness and help businesses operate with greater responsibility.

Framework

In recent years, ready-to-eat meals and products have seen extraordinary growth in GDO channels due to the push of hectic lifestyles and lack of time to dedicate to cooking, the pursuit of affordability, and the boom in plant-based and vegetarian alternatives. Behind this growth, however, lies greater exposure to food fraud. The complexity of the recipes, the large number of ingredients, and international supply chains make these products particularly vulnerable to fraudulent practices aimed at economic profit.

For large-scale retail trade, which acts as a final guarantor for consumers and often signs these products with its own distributor brand, understanding and mitigating the risk of fraud in this category has become an imperative that is no longer merely ethical and legal, but above all reputational, because a single case can compromise the brand’s reputation, lead to product recalls, generate litigation, and reduce consumer trust.

A food’s vulnerability to fraud is directly proportional to its level of transformation and the complexity of its supply chain. Ready-to-Eat products are the perfect storm for three main reasons:

1. The loss of visual identity of the raw material: once the ingredients are chopped, blended, cooked, or emulsified (as in the case of sauces, pestos, sauces, or fresh pasta fillings), it becomes visually impossible to distinguish a valuable ingredient from a poor or fraudulent one.
2. Multi-ingredient and globalized supply chains: a single ready-made dish can contain dozens of ingredients (oils, spices, protein isolate, additives, milk products, vegetables) from geographically distant intermediaries, fragmenting traceability.
3. Pressure on production costs: the high cost of energy services, refrigerated logistics, and raw materials is pushing some supply chain players to seek economic shortcuts to keep large-scale retail prices competitive.

Frauds

The main types of fraud that can affect Ready-to-Eat products include:

• replacement of high-value ingredients with less expensive alternatives, such as using sunflower seeds or cashews to replace pine nuts in pesto;
• use of lower quality vegetable oils instead of extra virgin olive oil;
• misleading statements about the origin of the raw materials or the Italian nature of the product;
• improper use of certifications such as organic, PDO, PGI or sustainability claims;
• alteration of technical documentation, analysis certificates or supply chain certifications.

How can a retailer protect itself and protect its consumers from such sophisticated threats that occur upstream in the supply chain? The answer lies in the shift from a purely analytical (reactive) approach to an integrated and preventive management system.

The first line of defense for GDO is the imposition of technical standards recognized by the GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiative). Requiring ready-made meal manufacturers to be BRCGS Food Safety or IFS Food certified ensures that the facility already implements a food fraud mitigation plan within its facilities. For distributors and intermediaries who do not directly manipulate the product, the BRCGS Agents and Brokers and IFS Broker standards ensure chain of custody continuity and transparency about the actual final batch producer.

Retailers and their partners must conduct a rigorous fraud vulnerability assessment (VACCP), periodically analyzing factors such as:

• Supplier history: continuous monitoring of analytical performance, complaints and RASFF notifications.
• Supply chain complexity: the more intermediaries there are between the field and the ready plate, the greater the frequency of audits and traceability checks must be.
• Geopolitical and economic factors: a poor harvest or a sudden increase in the price of a raw material must immediately trigger an “alert” of vulnerability in the products where they are used most.

In addition, supply agreements for distributor-branded Ready-to-Eat products must contain highly detailed technical specifications and armoured supply contracts. Visual inspection and routine chemical testing are no longer enough to expose modern-day scammers. The GDO must support its rolling audit plans with advanced analytical techniques such as:

• Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and PCR: for botanical and animal identification in multi-ingredient ready meals and veg alternatives (e.g. exclude the presence of meat in a vegetable burger or check the fish species in a ready-to-eat sauce).
• Stable isotope analysis (IRMS): to verify the declared geographical origin of ingredients with high added value (e.g. Italian tomato, EVO oil, DOP cheeses).
• NMR spectroscopy: to create complex “fingerprints” of liquid or semi-liquid foods and identify cuts or dilutions with foreign substances.

In the ever-changing Ready-to-Eat product sector, food safety and authenticity can no longer be relegated to simple bureaucratic requirements or routine technical steps. They represent, to all intents and purposes, the supporting pillars on which the economic and reputational value of the Distributor Brand rests. A single proven fraud on a high-service reference can instantly destroy the consumer’s trust in the entire sign, nullifying years of costly brand investments.

For the GDO, the “shield” against food fraud must therefore not be experienced as a mere operating cost or a slowdown in trade flows, but rather as an extraordinary opportunity for strategic differentiation. Developing rigorous specifications, investing in analytical plans, and forging long-term partnerships with certified co-packers means taking a cultural leap: moving from simple risk management to active value creation.

Retailers who can position themselves as rigid and authoritative “chain gatekeepers” will gain an invaluable competitive advantage. They will not only protect their margins from the direct and indirect costs of a product recall, but they will consolidate an unbreakable bond of trust with a modern consumer who, today more than ever, seeks maximum transparency directly in the shopping cart.