Quality risk and responsive actions in sourcing/procurement: an empirical study of food fraud cases in the UK

It is never an easy task to govern contemporary food systems and prevent contaminated foods from reaching further down the chains. This study aims to investigate how UK managers in food supply chains have perceived food fraud risk in their supply chain and to identify what their actions could be in response to the threat of food fraud. The study adopts the psychometric paradigm approach to measure risk perception and uses the data collected from 113 UK food practitioners to identify the determinants of their responsive actions. The results highlight that most managers have perceived high uncertainty in the food supply chain and considered the disruption of information flow as a major concern in dealing with food fraud. Therefore, this study suggests that putting effort into practices to improve supply chain visibility and facilitate the flow of information are weighted as important in the food fraud mitigation journey. Policy makers should also make better use of the current quality assurance schemes for proactive food quality control and fraud prevention; government agencies should improve the risk communication systems for trustworthy information dissemination.