Meat products and sugar are the most likely foodstuffs to be involved in frauds illegally tapping European Union (EU) subsidies or evading duties, a new report from EU anti-fraud agency OLAF has found.


Released in tandem with a European Commission report on EU fraud, the OLAF report said it had 18 open meat-focused cases and 16 sugar-centred probes, out of 80 food cases.


The report provided an example of a closed case involving EU milk producers evading fees payable for trading supplies above set quota limits by under-declaring inter member state milk trades to national food authorities and mislabelling supplies as ‘concentrated’ to avoid filling standard milk sale quotas.