Food fraud now estimated to be costing UK £1.9Bn per year

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) recently performed targeted surveillance sampling of food across the country:

• 20% out of 300 mince and processed meat products contained meat species not written on the label (although no horsemeat was detected);
• 8 out of 101 lamb products contained beef;
• 4 out of 375 herbs and spices samples had missing ingredients or were substituted with others;
• 3 out of 40 samples of basmati rice contained other rice varieties (from 9 to 29% of the total volume);
• 6 out of 39 dark chocolate samples contained milk proteins.