Food fraud: criminological perspective and limits of penal response in Poland

Abstract

The agriculture and food industry, which is one of the biggest sectors of the European Union economy, is extremely vulnerable to fraud connected with counterfeiting foodstuff and beverages as well as other fraudulent practices concerning nutrition. Regardless of the high EU standards of regulations in the field of food and nutrition safety, the scale of fraud in this area is constantly growing. The spectrum of potential fraudulent practices is very wide and at the same time covers, inter alia, labelling poorer quality products with a forged or original trademark, substituting cheaper ingredients and dangerous substances for the necessary ones, inappropriate labelling with respect to contents, e.g. by skipping some ingredients, inappropriate labelling of weight or types of animal meat used in meat products or seafood, or selling traditional food as organic. At present national legislators in the European Union member states still show little interest in combating those activities with the use of penal repression instruments. The analysis of Polish normative solutions confirms this observation. On the European scale, the problem also consists in law enforcement agencies’ little interest in efficient prosecution of this type of crime.