A new black market has emerged, and you may have already participated. Counterfeit foods are starting to become a very real and very scary business. Organized criminals are . They鈥檙e bottling Spanish olive oil and labeling it Italian. They鈥檙e masking mixtures of industrial solvents and alcohol as vodka. And they鈥檙e making a lot of money.聽
The counterfeit food market has taken already cheap foods and made them cheaper. Much like a drug dealer, these fake-food operations are cutting costs by substituting lower-end ingredients and practices for fraudulently labeled final products.
Studies are finding herbal teas without herbs or tea and juices that contain , which is often used as a flame retardant. Labeled tuna turns out to be an unidentifiable concoction of random meats, and some , a substance used in antifreeze and industrial solvents.
Although many of these stories have emerged from the UK and Europe, the has certainly hit the United States. According to Western Farm Press, 鈥淭he National Center for Food Protection and Defense estimates that Americans pay $10 billion to $15 billion annually for fake food鈥攐ften due to product laundering, dilution, and intentionally false labeling.鈥