The EU-funded Food Integrity Project is now half way through its 5-year term. spiritsEUROPE is a member of the workstream seeking to improve the authenticity of spirit drinks: part of this includes efforts to better understand the analytical methods used in the sector, while other work is in developing new methods to detect fake spirits faster. A key role for spiritsEUROPE’s is in disseminating information: liaising with officials and others to ensure they are aware of the problems and are involved in devising solutions.
In the worst incident in recent years, over 50 people died in the Czech Republic from consuming fake alcohol mixed with poisonous methanol. But there have been other tragedies - 5 died in the UK when an illegal distillery exploded and there have been deaths in Poland and Lithuania. Fake alcohol clearly has a market; while the demand can be driven partly by the application of excessive rates of excise tax and poor enforcement of production controls, the consequences can be fatal - there is therefore a clear need to do more to protect consumers.
Illicit alcohol also causes problems for governments as they cannot collect excise and other taxes on fakes and it undermines legitimate producers who have to compete against fraudsters. At different times, traders in EU Member States, often among the newer countries along the eastern border, have estimated that illicit alcohol accounts for as much as 80% of the spirits market. Some is from undeclared production in local distilleries; some is sold illegally from home- or small scale- distillation, some comes from unregistered producers. All is outside normal government controls. By its very nature, however, it is difficult to quantify its scale.
The Food Integrity Project has allowed us to open a dialogue with numerous bodies that might be involved in tackling illicit alcohol: Commission officials responsible for taxation; the Joint Research Centre; OECD and the EU Intellectual Property Office, among others. While we are discussing the problems with all of them, perhaps the most important development would be help from the Commission by way of it funding research into the scale of the illicit market. A better understanding of the problem would allow the right policy tools to be developed, thereby helping ensure consumers only buy authentic spirits, and thus save lives, improve government revenues and help genuine traders.
