The food industry must provide consumers with products which are innocuous, genuine, desirable and nutritive. To assure consumers that food has these characteristics, it is convenient to have appropriate controls of their hygiene state and to detect fraudulent practices, both of which are possible using adequate analytical techniques. However, the analysis of food has its own limitations such as specificity, reproducibility, sensitivity, economy, ease of use and standardization. Immunological techniques have objective advantages which merit their development and further use in the food industry. It has been widely demonstrated that immunological methods can be used in the food industry as reliable analytical techniques. Antibody‐based analytical methods for determining meat species and detecting adulteration of milk have been developed. We review the efforts made to develop immunological reactions and techniques to detect fraudulent replacements of foods. The selection of antigens as immunogens, the development of various polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies, and the selection of immunological techniques from immunodiffusion and immunoelectrophoresis to ELISA are described. The development of recombinant antibodies as an alternative for replacement or substitution of previously developed polyclonal or monoclonal antibody reagents will also be considered.