Economically Motivated Adulteration in Farming Supply Chains: The Role of Supply Chain Dispersion and Traceability

Food adulteration is one of the leading causes of health risks around the world and particularly in developing countries like China. Food adulteration could be the result of unintentional negligence or incompetence such as the case of bacterial contamination due to bad hygiene practices. However, many incidents of food adulteration are intentional and are motivated by malicious intentions (e.g., bioterrorism) or by financial motives. The latter is often called economically motivated adulteration (EMA). Over the last several decades there were many incidents of EMA of food around the world and in particular in China. For example, consumption of melamine-tainted infant formula and milk led to six infant deaths and nearly 300,000 young children severely sickened in China in 2008 (Everstine et al. 2013). In another example the outbreaks of avian flu in China has led to extensive use of antibiotics and other illegal drugs in poultry farming in China. In particular, in 2012, the KFC “Instant Chicken Scandal” in China revealed that the chickens used by KFC were fed with as many as 18 antibiotics on the farms (Pi et al. 2014).