National Food Crime Unit Event - Industry Desktop Excercises
The National Food Crime Unit are hosting an Industry Desktop Exercise at Yew Lodge Kegworth on 16th October 2025. This exercise aims to increase industry resilience to food crime, consisting of working through a food crime scenario specific to Animal-By-Products and Waste Diversion. This training exercise will be based on a food crime scenario relating to ABP with guided discussion points throughout, facilitated by NFCU professionals.
Delegates will:
- Understand key processes, steps and communication channels required during a food fraud incident.
- Analyse a food crime situation based on a case study, make decisions, and respond effectively to mitigate impact.
- Share best-practice openly in a safe space for industry professionals to practice their response to potential food crimes and their fraud-related challenges.
- Learn about the importance of fraud prevention methods.
The objectives of the day:
- To increase resilience to fraud by working through a live scenario of an incident, giving examples of good practice and things to avoid.
- To gain a greater understanding of the National Food Crime Unit (NFCU) during a food fraud incident and the role as a single point of contact.
- To recognise the different types of information required as part of a food crime investigation and how to identify them.
- To understand enforcement proportionality in relation to food crime.
- To identify the relevant internal and external stakeholders during a developing food crime investigation, and how they will mitigate risks.
- To identify obstacles to dealing with food crime incidents, including time constraints in relation to securing evidence.
- To emphasise the importance of fraud resilience, prevention & deterrence in maintaining brand reputation and food safety.
- To test businesses’ emergency response plan in a food crime incident.
Outline agenda for the day:
10-10:30am – arrivals, introductions, and networking opportunity.
10:30-10:45am – introductions from NFCU Team.
10:45-11am – introduction to the scenario.
11:00-11:30am – group task one and feedback.
11:30-12:15pm – group task two feedback.
12:15-12:30pm – pre-lunch review.
12:30-13:00pm – lunch break.
13:00-13:30pm – group task three feedback.
13:30-14:00pm – group task four feedback.
14:00-15:00pm – fraud prevention essentials presentation, delivered by NFCU officers.
