Food Adulteration and Food Fraud

What do we really know about the food we eat? A firestorm of recent food-fraud cases — from the honey-laundering scandal in the USA, to the forty-year-old frozen 'zombie' meat smuggled into China, to horse meat passed off as beef in the UK — suggests fraudulent and intentional acts of food adulteration are on the rise. Jonathan Rees examines the complex causes and surprising effects of adulteration and fraud across the global food chain. Covering comestibles of all kinds from around the globe, Rees describes the different types of contamination, the role and effectiveness of government regulation and our willingness to ignore deception if the groceries we purchase are cheap or convenient. Pithy, punchy and cogent, Food Adulteration and Food Fraud — part of the Food Controversies series — offers an important insight into this vital problem with our consumption.

'The problems [of adulterated food] may be timeless, but, as this book shows, the responses are ever evolving, culturally dependent, and worth more attention.' — Benjamin R. Cohen, author of Pure Adulteration: Cheating on Nature in the Age of Manufactured Food