Two of Britain's most ordinary grocery items — milk and tea — sit among the food categories most exposed to economically motivated adulteration, according to Natasha Linhart, founder and CEO of the international food and beverage trading firm Atlante.

Linhart, who has spent more than 30 years in global food trade and founded Atlante in 1994, argues that paperwork alone no longer protects the supply chain. "Documentation remains an important foundation, but increasingly it must be supported by scientific evidence and risk-based controls," she writes.

For buyers and quality teams, that shift changes the cost structure of assurance. Origin claims that once relied on supplier certificates now increasingly require lab testing on top of traceability systems and vulnerability assessments.

Why milk attracts fraudsters

The dairy sector has long been a fraud target because of its scale and economic value, Linhart notes. The typical schemes are straightforward:

• Dilution with water
• Replacing milk fat with undeclared vegetable fats
• Misleading geographical origin claims
• Manipulated labelling

The economics drive the risk. Products tied to a specific region or production method command a premium, and that premium is exactly what adulteration captures. Verifying origin has therefore become a commercial issue for manufacturers, not just a regulatory one.

What makes tea harder to police

Tea shares the same vulnerabilities but adds a structural problem: long, complex international supply chains that documentation alone can't authenticate. Premium varieties may be blended with lower-grade leaves, swapped for different botanical species, or sold with false origin claims.

Global demand keeps growing, which raises the reward for substitution and puts pressure on buyers to verify at every stage rather than at the point of import.

What replaces the paperwork?

The scientific tool Linhart highlights for dairy is isotope ratio analysis. The method verifies a milk's geographical origin by comparing its natural isotopic fingerprint against its declared provenance — effectively a lab test that a forged certificate can't survive.

Who pays for it matters. These tests sit alongside supplier approval programmes, traceability systems and targeted authenticity testing, and they're deployed where fraud risk is highest rather than across the board. "No single measure can eliminate food fraud entirely," Linhart writes. "Resilience comes from combining strong supplier relationships with proportionate, evidence-based verification."

What does this change for the trade?

For producers, brands and retailers, the practical answer is that authenticity is becoming part of food integrity rather than a niche concern. Shoppers increasingly want confidence that food is not only safe but genuine and accurately described.

That expectation, Linhart argues, will keep science-led verification central to protecting both businesses and consumer trust as provenance claims grow more valuable — and more worth faking.

About the author cited: Natasha Linhart is founder and CEO of Atlante, a food and beverage specialist operating across the UK, the United States, Switzerland, Japan and South Korea.