Food Fraud: Labels On What We Eat Often Mislead

Despite trend in local, "authentic" foods, many aren't what they seem.

Part of our weekly "In Focus" series—stepping back, looking closer.

The farm-to-table trend is cooking. Urban gardening is on the rise. And high-end chefs are riding the locavore wave, promising superior, sustainable ingredients that can be traced back to their fields and pastures, which are often just a few miles down the road.
 
It feels as though a new age of food transparency has dawned.

But has it really?

As shown by Europe's recent horsemeat scandal—in which scores of products labeled as "beef" were found to contain up to 100 percent horsemeat—and arrests last spring of Chinese traders who were allegedly peddling rat meat as lamb, there's still considerable mystery around where a lot of our food comes from.