EU Food Fraud Suspicions: The Monthly Report Explained
What the European Commission’s monthly report on agri-food fraud suspicions covers, how to read one row of it, and what 24 reports add up to.
Every month the European Commission publishes the cross-border food fraud suspicions that EU authorities shared with each other. This guide explains what the report is, how to read it, and what its last 24 issues show once you add them up.
What is the monthly report on EU agri-food fraud suspicions?
It is a European Commission publication that lists the cross-border “non-compliances with fraud suspicions” EU authorities identified and shared in the Alert and Cooperation Network (ACN) during one month.[1] The suspicions come from the network’s three components: the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF), the Administrative Assistance and Cooperation network (AAC) and the Agri-Food Fraud Network (FFN).[1] Each report gives itself two jobs: to help authorities organise risk-based controls against fraudulent practices, and to give the food sector “valuable but selected information” for its vulnerability assessments and for spotting new emerging risks.[2]
How does a fraud suspicion reach the report?
Through iRASFF, the online system in which ACN members exchange notifications. Each member has a single contact point that validates findings and sends them to the network.[3][4] EU law defines a fraud notification as a notification “concerning suspected intentional action by businesses or individuals for the purpose of deceiving purchasers and gaining undue advantage therefrom”.[4] The Commission reviews every notification in the ACN, checks its classification and looks for trends and links between cases.[5]
Both risk notifications and fraud suspicions reach the public, in different forms. RASFF notifications on risks can be searched one by one in the public RASFF Window; fraud suspicions are published once a month, in this report. The Commission wants operators to be informed about “generic information” on fraud suspicions, “as it is already for notifications on risks within the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF), via the dedicated ‘RASFF Window’ system”.[1] In the report, that means a summary of each case: product category, commodity, issue, origin and notifying country, with no business named.[2] Some of the suspicions are RASFF notifications themselves: the report draws on all three parts of the ACN, RASFF included, and its case tables mark each RASFF notification with a link to the RASFF Window.[1][2]
What is in each monthly report?
A headline count, three charts and the cases themselves. The September 2026 report opens with 164 suspicions retrieved from 803 iRASFF notifications, then breaks them down by product, by fraud category and by how they were found.[2] The tables that follow give every case its product category, commodity, issue, origin and notifying country.
Reading a single row:
What are the three fraud categories in the report?
Product tampering, record tampering and other non-compliances, each with its own subcategories. The Commission bases the terms on EU law, draft Codex guidelines on food fraud and the CEN standard on food authenticity terms.[3][5] The quietest category is the largest: other non-compliances, the claims a buyer never sees written down, made up 48% of the suspicions in the last 12 reports.
What do the last 24 monthly reports show?
We added up the 24 reports from October 2024 to September 2026. The latest 12 list 2,253 suspicions, retrieved from 9,204 iRASFF notifications; the 12 before them listed 2,437.[1] Month by month, the last 12 reports ran from 150 to 223 suspicions.[1]
The network’s annual report for 2025 gives one reason why fewer notifications were identified as potentially intentional that year than in 2024: notifications reporting pesticide residues on products from non-EU countries were “no longer systematically categorised as suspected fraud”, because the active substance concerned may be authorised in the country of origin.[5]
Fraud suspicions, matched to what you buy.
iComplai brings together authority notifications and signals from 150,000+ global data sources and scores every raw material you buy for fraud vulnerability, so a VACCP review starts from current data instead of last year’s.
See VACCP fraud assessmentWhich products attract the most fraud suspicions?
Food supplements, by a wide margin. Dietetic foods, food supplements and fortified foods account for 623 of the 2,253 suspicions in the last 12 reports, 28%; no other category reaches 8%.[1] In September 2026 their rows included health claims in online sales and misdeclared contents.[2]
The ACN’s annual report for 2025 also puts this category first, with 499 cases flagged for suspicion of fraud.[5] Its yearly figures do not match the sum of the 2025 monthly reports, though: 145 fruit and vegetable cases against 366 in the monthly reports, for example. Treat them as two separate counts and do not add one to the other.
How are fraud suspicions detected?
Mostly by official market controls: 1,381 of the 2,253 suspicions in the last 12 reports, 61%. Border controls found 328, consumer complaints 206 and companies’ own checks 147.[1]
Monitoring of media found 142, nearly four times as many as whistleblower information (37). Media monitoring and companies’ own checks together account for about one suspicion in eight: the share a food business can reach itself, by watching authority and media signals for the materials it buys and by checking its suppliers on evidence, not only on self-reported forms.
How can food businesses use the monthly report?
As one input to their own food fraud controls. Helping operators with vulnerability assessments is one of the two purposes the Commission gives the report.[2]
How does iComplai build on the monthly report?
The Commission’s report is monthly, limited to cross-border cases and generic by design.[1] iComplai works with the same kind of signal at a different scale: authority notifications from around the world plus signals from more than 150,000 global data sources, turned into fraud risk scores for the raw materials a customer actually buys.
Our monthly Food Fraud Suspicion Bulletin is the public part of that work: it selects cases from authority and media sources, explains why each matters to a buyer and suggests mitigation steps. The Food Authenticity Network published the October 2026 edition for its members as a prioritised digest “blended from online regulatory and media reports”.[6] Inside the platform, the AI assistant writes stakeholder-ready reports from a customer’s own subscribed data.
EU food fraud suspicions: FAQ
What is an ACN fraud notification?
A non-compliance notification in iRASFF about suspected intentional action by businesses or individuals to deceive purchasers and gain an undue advantage, in breach of EU agri-food chain rules. The definition is in Article 2 of the IMSOC Regulation, (EU) 2019/1715.
Are the cases in the monthly report confirmed fraud?
No. The Commission states that the non-compliances with fraud suspicions are not confirmed frauds; they help alert authorities and trigger investigations by Member States.
Who publishes the monthly report on EU agri-food fraud suspicions?
The European Commission, on its food safety website. The suspicions come from the three parts of the Alert and Cooperation Network: RASFF, the Administrative Assistance and Cooperation network and the Agri-Food Fraud Network.
Why are some fraud cases missing from the report?
The report only includes cross-border cases shared in the ACN. Suspicions that affect a single Member State are not shared in the network, and topics such as animal and plant health are outside its scope.
How many fraud suspicions does the report list each month?
Between 150 and 223 a month in the last 12 reports, 188 on average, in iComplai’s count of the Commission’s reports. The September 2026 report listed 164.
How can a food business use the monthly report?
As one input to its food fraud vulnerability assessment: check the commodities and origins it buys, note repeats, and use a matching case to ask suppliers specific questions or to adjust testing.
See which fraud suspicions touch your raw materials
We can show which authority notifications, fraud suspicions and signals matched your own materials and origins over the last weeks.
Talk to iComplaiReferences
All sources were checked on 29 October 2026. Totals across months are iComplai’s sums of the figures printed in each Commission report. This guide is not legal advice.
[1] European Commission. Monthly reports on EU Agri-Food Fraud suspicions (the series page, with reports from January 2024). food.ec.europa.eu
[2] European Commission. September 2026 – Monthly report on EU Agri-Food Fraud suspicions (PDF). food.ec.europa.eu
[3] European Commission. Alert and Cooperation Network: ACN notifications, including the fraud terminology and classification. food.ec.europa.eu
[4] Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/1715 (the IMSOC Regulation), Article 2. eur-lex.europa.eu
[5] European Commission. Alert and Cooperation Network: 2025 Annual Report (2026). food.ec.europa.eu
[6] Food Authenticity Network. iComplai Food Fraud Incidents Report – October 2026 (26 October 2026). foodauthenticity.global