Italy’s food fraud agency shifts inspections to AI-driven risk analysis

Italy’s agri-food fraud inspectorate marked its 40th anniversary in Rome on Friday by laying out a broader enforcement strategy that relies less on blanket checks and more on risk analysis, digital traceability, laboratory science and coordination across the state.

The agency, known as ICQRF, said it carried out 54,913 inspections in 2025, leading to 497 seizures worth more than €47 million and 1,340 sanction orders worth more than €1.8 million. Officials said the figures show the scale of the agency’s work, but they also stressed that the next phase will focus on making controls more selective rather than simply increasing their number.

Felice Assenza, head of the ICQRF department at Italy’s agriculture ministry, said the agency’s role has expanded well beyond traditional anti-fraud inspections. Speaking at the event, he said the protection of quality food depends on consumer trust and that trust requires a credible control system. Over time, ICQRF’s work has widened from production checks to certification, labeling, online commerce and unfair commercial practices, according to the agency’s account of its evolution.

The Rome event presented that shift as a response to changes in the market and in regulation. Officials pointed to the growth of European food safety and traceability rules, the expansion of protected designation systems such as DOP and IGP, the rise of organic production and the spread of digital sales channels. They also linked the agency’s development to past food safety crises, including the 1986 methanol scandal that deeply affected the Italian wine sector.

In practical terms, the new approach places more weight on identifying where the highest risks are and concentrating inspections there. That model is now backed by a multi-agency control unit that has been operating for three years and was formally established by an April 21, 2026 law. The unit brings together ICQRF with the Carabinieri, the Guardia di Finanza, the Customs and Monopolies Agency, Agea, state police, coast guard, fire service and other public bodies involved in protecting the food supply chain.

Officials said the purpose of that structure is not to multiply inspections, but to share databases, reduce duplication and intervene earlier when warning signs appear. For businesses that are already compliant, the idea is to limit repetitive requests and overlapping checks from different agencies. For higher-risk operators and sectors, the goal is to target enforcement faster and with better information.

That same data-led approach is also being applied to unfair trading practices in the food chain. ICQRF said it has intensified controls in that area since becoming the competent authority, with checks rising from about 150 at the start of the effort to more than 2,500 in 2025.

Another major part of the plan concerns online markets. ICQRF said agreements with major e-commerce platforms now allow it to act against counterfeits, imitations, evocations and misuse of geographic indications in digital channels. Italian officials described that as increasingly important for a food system whose value depends heavily on its reputation abroad and whose products are often targeted by fake or misleading “Italian sounding” marketing.

The agency also said it is investing more in scientific tools. Assenza announced stronger laboratory capacity and the use of artificial intelligence in risk analysis and in the monitoring of web sales and commercial practices. ICQRF already uses DNA analysis and isotopic testing to verify authenticity and origin, officials said, and it is building new databases for products including olive oil and honey to improve anomaly detection.

Those measures could matter directly for the beverage industry, even when wine, spirits or beer are not the explicit focus of every control program. Italian wines with DOP or IGP status depend on proof of origin and compliance with production rules, and they are vulnerable to online imitation and misuse of protected names. More targeted controls, digital traceability tools and AI-based monitoring could therefore raise pressure on operators to document authenticity more precisely while also strengthening defenses against fraud that can damage legitimate producers.

The issue is especially sensitive in Italy because protected food and drink names are a major economic asset. During the Rome event, Paolo De Castro, a former agriculture minister and now president of Nomisma, said controls are central to building trust and protecting the value of certified production. Data cited at the meeting put the Italian DOP economy at more than €22 billion. De Castro argued that reputation alone is not enough to defend that value and that compliance with product specifications, efficient control bodies and stronger tools to catch fraud outside traditional channels are all necessary.

Officials and speakers also raised concerns about what they called a new vulnerability in the “communication chain,” meaning the gap that can open between what a product really is and how it is presented to consumers online or in marketing. That concern helps explain why monitoring is moving beyond warehouses, factories and physical shipments into websites, marketplaces and digital claims.

Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida used the anniversary event to defend the government’s efforts to strengthen the inspectorate. He said ICQRF had been reinforced during his tenure through an increase in inspector staffing and said more inspectors, technicians and managers would be hired under the government’s Coltiva Italia plan. He argued that an agency with growing responsibilities cannot remain undersized, particularly as its work now includes digital surveillance and enforcement against unfair practices as well as traditional product controls.

The event in Rome presented ICQRF’s next phase as a broader state effort rather than a stand-alone inspection strategy. Officials said permanent coordination between ministries, police, customs and sector agencies should make enforcement more preventive and less fragmented. The practical test will be whether shared intelligence, scientific verification and targeted online action can curb fraud while easing unnecessary burdens on compliant producers, including wine and other beverage companies that depend on the credibility of Italian origin claims in domestic and export markets.

ICQRF said work is continuing on the expansion of its databases and on the use of AI to refine risk indicators, with the aim of directing inspectors and laboratory resources toward the areas where anomalies appear first.