APA News
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Campaign to Stop Food Fraud
Which? have launched a campaign to Stop Food Fraud following the results of an investigation into lamb takeaways sold in London and Birmingham. Which? bought 30 takeaways in Birmingham and 30 in London (15 lamb curries and 15 minced lamb kebabs in each location) and tested them for the presence of lamb, chicken, beef, pork, turkey, goat and horse DNA.
In Birmingham a total of 16 out of 30 samples were adulterated: 11 contained a mix of lamb with beef and/or chicken and five contained no lamb at all. In London eight out of 30 samples were adulterated: six contained a mix of lamb with beef and /or chicken and two contained no lamb at all. Five of the London samples couldn’t be identified in the testing, probably due to over-cooking or repeated cooking which destroyed the DNA.
Statistics gathered by the Food Standards Agency show that the level of food standards sampling in London boroughs is low and data released in response to a Parliamentary Question showed that nine local authorities including the City of London and Birmingham did not report any food standards sampling in 2012-13 via the Local Authority Enforcement Monitoring System (LAEMS). More detailed information was given in a table deposited in the House of Commons Library .
Commenting on the investigation Professor Chris Elliott, who has been carrying out a review into the Integrity and Assurance of Food Supply Networks said “Detecting the fraud is a huge challenge in itself as the criminals are clever about how they operate and will always try to keep one or two steps ahead. But I do believe that if the industry and government adopt my key principles of food-crime prevention then life should get much more difficult for these rogues who set out to con us.”;
Which? notes that in areas where enforcement sampling has led to prosecutions this hasn’t deterred other restaurants in the area from continuing to pass off chicken and beef as lamb.
