When you see a headline like “Why food fraud persists, even with improving tech”, you might reasonably expect to be told why honey is deliberately contaminated with glucose syrup, why melamine was added to Chinese baby formula or why spice is adulterated with industrial dyes.
These are just some of the ‘food crimes’ mentioned in the article, which also bemoans the difficulty/impossibility of monitoring the food we eat. Yet the motive for food fraud – extra profit – is never addressed. Because to have done so, the BBC would have had to challenge the logic of the very system it was set up to defend.
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/
A recent media report on food fraud illustrates a familiar pattern: describing the symptoms while carefully avoiding the cause. When stories discuss adulterated honey, contaminated baby formula, or diluted spices, the focus usually falls on technological limits, regulatory gaps, or criminal behavior by isolated actors. What remains largely unspoken is the economic pressure that makes such practices predictable rather than exceptional.
ReplyDeleteFood fraud is not simply a failure of monitoring; it is rooted in production for profit. In a competitive market, reducing costs and increasing margins becomes a structural necessity. When survival in the market depends on profitability, shortcuts and adulteration emerge as recurring outcomes, not moral anomalies. Technology may improve detection, but it cannot eliminate the incentive itself.
This explains why scandals reappear across countries and decades despite stronger regulations. The problem is not lack of scientific capacity but the social framework within which food is produced and distributed. As long as food is primarily a commodity rather than a directly organized response to human need, pressures toward fraud will persist.
Media coverage often stops short of this conclusion because questioning the profit motive would mean questioning the broader organization of the economic system itself. Yet without addressing that underlying logic, discussions about food safety risk becoming circular: new scandals, new regulations, and the same structural incentives producing the next crisis.