Food Fraud: It is what it is, but that ain’t all

By 19. March 2014Blog, Quality

A continuation of the meat mislabelling situation in the UK. Following the horse meat scandal and finding pork DNA in lamb burgers labelled as halal, Leicester City Council’s Food Safety Team have been testing food in their local area and the results are in.

The testing was carried out in local establishments whose produce was probably not tested in the nationwide testing of last year. The food to be tested was split into 5 groupings or phases and the percentage that failed the test is written after:

Various meat                    70%
Minced meat                     38%
Samosas & spring rolls      45%
Lamb curries                     30%
Doner kebabs                    60%

Most of the fails seem to be due to sloppy production practises and cautions have been issued.

The council make a number of recommendations based on the test results including to:
“call on the FSA to issue guidance to businesses on the use of the term ‘doner kebab’
call on the FSA to include doner kebabs and meat curry meals in the national food testing programme for 2014/15”

Kebab eaters will be happy to know that the undeclared meat in the kebabs was only chicken, unless you don’t like chicken of course…

The full report is available for all to read from the Leicester City Council website.