Abstract: In recent years, a serious of economically motivated adulteration (EMA) of food incidents, such as melaminetainted milk and horsemeat, have aroused wide concern among the public and caused serious harm to food safety and food trade. Therefore, worldwide research efforts have been made on the EMA problem. This article summarizes the current status of research on this topic including establishment of a basic database of EMA incidents, the characteristics of EMA incidents, the factors affecting EMA incidents and technological system for the prevention and control of EMA incidents. In order to better deal with the EMA problem, we propose that China should make more efforts to collect and analyze data on EMA incidents and develop a prevention and control mechanism suitable to its own national conditions.

Key words: economically motivated adulteration, food safety, food fraud