This has been getting a lot of press: according to the U.K.’s Center for Retail Research, cheese is the most stolen food in the world! Retailers report 4% of cheese stolen a year.
The group surveyed 1,187 retailers representing more than 250,000 retail outlets across 43 countries.
“The biggest threats for retailers are employees and shoplifters,” said Dr. Joshua Bamfield, Director of the Center for Retail Research in a phone interview with The Huffington Post.
With the price of cheese rising, Bamfield says this is far from surprising given it could be seen as “a lucrative business opportunity for small time criminals.”
“It’s not just grannies saying, I need some cheese I’ll just go and steal it. A lot of the theft is for resale and a lot of this cheese will be resold into other markets or to restaurants.”
Other “high risk” foods to make the most stolen food list include fresh meat, chocolate, alcohol, seafood and infant formula.
Either way, theft is a growing concern for retailers, especially since the annual amount of stolen retail goods increased by 6.6% since June 2010. But theft also adds to the global average family grocery shopping bill by an extra $200. In the U.S., that figure was $435, noted the report.
Source: The Huffington Post