Supply chain food crime and fraud: a sytematic literature review of food criminality

Purpose of this paper:
The papers focuses on considering the variables known to affect the two domains of food crime and food fraud within a supply chain context. Comparing and contrasting known research to help understand and secure the food supply chains, whilst underpinning the gaps needed to deliver UK Government policy in the food supply chain criminality arena (House of Commons International Development Committee, 2013).
Design/methodology/approach:
Employing the systematic literature review (SLR) (Denyer and Tranfield, 2006) to navigate through and provide a gap analysis from multidisciplinary sources of literature using the keywords ‘Governance’, ‘Inventory’, ‘Procurement’, ‘Resilience’, ‘Risk’ and ‘Traceability’ to capture traditional Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) research for comparison against the areas of ‘food fraud’ and ‘food crime’ for Food Supply Chain Risk Management (FSCRM). The outputs of the SLR were compared against each other [SCRM and FSCRM] to identify and strengthen a gap analysis and identification of future research to benefit both academic and practitioner alike.
Findings:
The analysis of the literature found demonstrates divergence in views across different research areas (particularly in terms of articles versus
peer reviewed research), and in doing so identifies areas for future research within the Food supply chain risk management sector.
Practical implications:
The systematic approach employed provides researchers and practitioners with a landscape of current literature, which highlights areas of research to strengthen and support practical application in the mitigation of risk and criminality within food supply chains.
What is original/value of paper:
Accepted areas of practice within SCRM were found by this paper to be wanting within the field of food supply crime and fraud. The identified research areas are correlated to the findings of a UK Government report (Elliott, 2014) which is steering policy and this research has identified subsequent research to underpin UK policy creation.