UK firm is accused of passing off huge quantities of potentially unsafe foreign meat as British

A UK meat processor, supplying leading supermarkets, schools and hospitals, has been accused of passing off huge quantities of potentially unsafe foreign meat as British.

The National Food Crime Unit, which is part of the Food Standards Agency, is understood to have launched a major investigation.

Consumers have been kept in the dark about the potentially huge scandal, while a key industry trade body has expressed fury at not been told about the investigation.

The details have emerged some ten years after the crisis where horsemeat was passed off as beef and sold in burgers and ready meals by leading supermarkets, including Tesco, and fast food chains.

The allegations have been revealed by Farmers’ Weekly and are based on the testimony of workers employed by the company, which has not been named pending possible prosecution.

The firm has been accused by former employees of regularly ‘washing’ hams that were visibly off, and mixing rotting pork with fresh product for further processing.

Other products such as ox tongues were not heat treated properly, and meat was sometimes thawed out on the factory floor.

It is also alleged that the paperwork for sampling, which would pick up dangerous food bugs such as listeria and E coli, was falsified.

Schools, hospitals, care homes and prisons were also indirectly supplied, with one source alleging the most rotten meat would end up there.

One anonymous employee told Farmers Weekly: ‘It used to get me to a point where I’d be thinking ‘we’re going to kill someone’. Another said: ‘There were days I’d sit outside in my car crying because I didn’t want to go in. It was that bad.’ There is no suggestion that any of the processor’s customers were aware of the criminal practices, which took place for at least two decades through to 2020 and possibly beyond.

The head of the National Food Crime Unit, Darren Davies, said retailers were told about the problem last year, however, there was no public announcement about the potentially huge scandal.

Schools, hospitals, care homes and prisons were also indirectly supplied, with one source alleging the most rotten meat would end up there (Stock Image) 

He said: ‘The FSA’s National Food Crime Unit is carrying out a criminal investigation into how a supplier was allegedly providing products labelled as British when they were in fact sourced from elsewhere.

‘The FSA advised retailers last year to check their cooked meat supply chain and to apply extra due diligence in their checks. We don’t give out these alerts without a reason.’

The food wholesale firms who were supplied by the processor have expressed shock at the allegations and are carrying out their own investigations.

The Association of Independent Meat Suppliers’ (Aims),which represents processors, accused the Food Crime Unit of failing to alert them to their investigation.

Its group head of operations, Norman Bagley, said: ‘It is inexcusable that food manufacturers and food service businesses, some of whom supply some of society’s most vulnerable consumers, were not alerted at any time to date by the NFCU as to there either being a possibility of labelling fraud or of a risk to public health.’