Food fraud of rejected imported foods in China in 2009–2019

Numerous food fraud (FF) problems have been identified in China's rejected imported foods. However, a limited number of studies have been conducted on this area. We studied rejected imported foods involving FF in China in 2009–2019, focusing on the country of origin, port of entry, food category, fraudulent method, and adulterated substances. The definition of FF in this study centers on the intrinsic state of foods due to the difficulty in making a rigorous judgment on the subjective intentionality of rejected imported foods. The results of our study were as follows: 1) 30.35% (8722/28744) of all rejected imported foods involved FF; 2) rejected imported foods involving FF came from 112 countries and regions, with Taiwan province of China, Japan, and the United States ranking the top three; 3) the ports of entry of these foods were distributed in 24 provinces, of which Shanghai (29.07%), Fujian (15.93%), and Guangdong (15.57%) were the top three; 4) processed foods accounted for the highest proportion of FF (87.70%), followed by edible agricultural products (12.30%), and the specific food categories mainly included drinks (14.77%), candy products (9.11%), cookies (7.74%), meat and offal (7.14%), pastries (5.91%), tea and its products (5.17%), condiments (5.02%), alcoholic (5.01%); 5) artificially enhanced (41.07%), missing/inappropriate certificates (35.28%), and illegal imports (22.21%) were the main FF types; 6) food additives, prohibited veterinary drugs, non-edible substances, and low-cost substitutes were the main adulterants. Given that smuggled foods were not in the rejected imported food samples, FF in this part of imported food was not included in the scope of this paper. The results of this study help to grasp the characteristics of the FF problem of imported foods in China and provide a reference for its prevention and control.