Fraud in the food system: Critiquing the ‘bad apple’ perspective

Fraud in the food system is most commonly considered from the perspective of the vulnerabilities associated with the single bad actor (bad apple). Such approaches focus on single threats operationalised within an organisation, but rarely consider group dynamics within the drivers and enablers of fraudulent activities across the food system. The aim of this review is to develop the 'bad-apple, bad-barrel, bad-orchard' framework, novel in the context of contextualising fraud in food systems. Extant literature is drawn from a range of disciplines to consider the framing of food-related fraudulent activity and the explanatory positioning of fraud as a one-off event, a wider modus-operandi within an organisation or being driven by wider socio-economic and geo-political factors. The ABO framework proposed here ('bad-apple, bad-barrel, bad-orchard') provides an alternative approach to exploring the drivers of food-related fraud within the food system and other interacting systems such as the financial system and political system. Strategic management frameworks aimed at reducing fraud need to consider and systematically address complex patterns of corruption. This work has implications for policy makers, and the food industry in considering how prevention strategies need to evolve to reduce the incidence of food-related fraud.