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The sixth edi­tion of a report on orga­nized crime in the food sec­tor has been released after a year of joint work by Eurispes, Coldiretti, and the Obser­va­tory on Crime in Agri­cul­ture and on the Agri-Food Sys­tem.

The annual report aims to pre­dict changes and trends in the agri-food sec­tor at a global level, pro­vid­ing an overview on the mea­sures and meth­ods of pre­ven­tion and pro­tec­tion against fraud and other acts of decep­tion.

Accord­ing to the for­mer pub­lic pros­e­cu­tor Gian Carlo Caselli, who chairs the sci­en­tific com­mit­tee of the Osser­va­to­rio Agro­mafie Foun­da­tion, and the pres­i­dent of Eurispes, Gian Maria Fara, the phe­nom­e­non known as Mafia 3.0 is one of the lead­ing chal­lenges fac­ing the sec­tor.

“Those who man­age the crim­i­nal sec­tor that inter­sects with the agri-food chain took off the ​‘army clothes’ to wear the ​‘suit,’ suc­ceed­ing in dis­cov­er­ing and reap­ing the ben­e­fits of glob­al­iza­tion, new tech­nolo­gies, eco­nom­ics, and finance,” the two said.

Within the con­text of more mod­ern and com­pli­cated sup­ply chains, crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions are increas­ingly ​“more inter­ested in devel­op­ing coop­er­a­tive busi­nesses than in fight­ing each other,” the offi­cials said.

The intel­li­gent struc­ture of the Mafia 3.0 is at the cross­roads of var­i­ous ser­vices required by dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions, ​“accept­ing their finan­cial resources in order to enhance and increase them through means that appear to be law­ful.”

The agri-food sec­tor is, there­fore, an easy vic­tim of con­di­tion­ing and pen­e­tra­tion. Accord­ing to the report, Mafia 3.0 has expe­ri­enced a 12.4‑percent increase in annual turnover, with rev­enues ris­ing to €24.5 bil­lion per year.

“Being able to exer­cise con­trol over one or more large buy­ers means being able to influ­ence the pro­duc­tion and, con­se­quently, the price, as well as own­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion chains or super­mar­kets makes it pos­si­ble to deter­mine the suc­cess of a prod­uct,” Fara and Caselli said.

In order to limit these agri-food rack­ets, the report rec­om­mended updat­ing the leg­is­la­tion on agri-food.

How­ever, scrutiny and reg­u­la­tions over the sec­tor have increased in recent years. Accord­ing to offi­cial sta­tis­tics, Italy has become the lead­ing reporter of sus­pi­cious activ­ity to the Rapid Alert Sys­tem for Food and Feed. Last year, the coun­try filed 551 reports, equiv­a­lent to 14.4 per­cent of the total sent to the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion.

Over­all, grow­ing demand for trans­parency and qual­ity of the pro­duc­tion chain has led agri-food sec­tor stake­hold­ers to increas­ingly con­sider vol­un­tary cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tems, in addi­tion to those cur­rently in force.

Among these is blockchain tech­nol­ogy, which can be used to mon­i­tor every stage of the sup­ply chain in real time.

The Agro­mafia report also shows that as tech­nol­ogy evolves, new chal­lenges arise. For exam­ple, a grow­ing num­ber of con­sumer have become more aware of the health ben­e­fits of cer­tain food prod­ucts, includ­ing olive oil. As a result, a pro­lif­er­a­tion of fake news and mis­in­for­ma­tion has fol­lowed in order to profit off of this healthy eat­ing trend.

“What hap­pens if a fun­da­men­tal part of our lifestyle is strongly influ­enced by false infor­ma­tion, cir­cu­lat­ing on the web and social media, hav­ing an impact on what we put on the table and, con­se­quently, on the way we take care of our health,” Fara and Caselli asked.

Opin­ions of indi­vid­u­als can be affected to such an extent that the World Eco­nomic Forum has included fake news in the list of global risks.

The best way to defend against fake news is to always check the truth­ful­ness of the infor­ma­tion using var­i­ous fact-check­ing web­sites as well as com­mon sense and crit­i­cal think­ing, the report said.

• ANSA


• Osser­va­to­rio Agro­mafie


• Eurispes