A meat supplier has been under investigation by The National Food Crime Unit (NFCU) regarding cooked meat, labelled as British but coming instead from South America and Europe. The retailer of the product has been revealed as Booths supermarket, but the supermarket itself is not under investigation.
The supermarket issued a statement at the end of last week confirming its support and complete co-operation with the NFCU.
The retailer stated: “Booths support for the investigation relates to a limited selection of cooked meat products and Booths have no knowledge of any other aspects of the investigation. At the point of being made aware of the potential issues in 2021 Booths acted instantly, removing all relevant products from sale and ceased trading with the supplier with immediate effect.”
The identity of the meat supplier remains unknown at this stage.
The Association of Independent Meat Suppliers (AIMS) told Food Management Today: “There was an awful lot of speculation on social media as to what the products are and which supermarket was involved.
“For the record, this National Food Crime Unit (NFCU) investigation was reported to the FSA within their annual report in December 2022 at which time it entered the public domain.
“At that time, AIMS asked, on behalf of our membership, for clarity as to what the product was. They declined to tell us and despite us continuing to ask have [repeatedly] failed to tell us. It was only on Wednesday last week that we found out from speaking with a journalist that the issue related to sliced cooked beef.
“It is important to remember that this isn’t a public health issue but one of product integrity.
“It is highly unlikely that any criminal who has scored a success with one retailer is likely to have stopped their criminal activities there and we are concerned that they could have targeted other parts of the supply chain, in particular, cash and carries, foodservice suppliers, and wholesale suppliers to the bakery and sandwich shop industry.”
Not a food safety issue
In its statement Booths was keen to emphasise that the incident was not in any way related to food safety issues. It said: “Booths would like to confirm that fresh meat, poulty and game products are entirely unaffected by this investigation and that with the exception of th limited selection of cooked meat products impacted in 2021 Booths is absolutely confident in its British only meat commitment. It is also important to note that whilst the NFCU investigation relates to a potential serious food fraud incident, this is not a food safety issue.”
“Issues of provenance, traceabililty, honesty and authenticity are of the highest importance to Booths and the business has been fully co-operating with and supporting the work of the NFCU for the past 18 months. It is important that the NFCU is able to complete its investigations in an objective and impartial manner. The NFCU continues to have the full support of Booths and to that effect, Booths will make no further comment at this stage, any further enquiries relating to this matter should be directed to the NFCU.”
Additional investigations into food fraud
Commenting on its additional investigations Andrew Quinn, deputy head of NFCU at the Food Standards Agency told Food Management Today: “The FSA’s National Food Crime Unit is investigating alleged food fraud and how a smokehouse supplied a large supermarket retailer with smoked salmon labelled as fresh and Scottish when it was in fact sourced frozen from Norway.
“We regularly engage with industry to share intelligence, tackling food fraud to protect the consumer. The NFCU acted on intelligence it received which resulted in one arrest being made and three further suspects were interviewed voluntarily under caution.
“It is vitally important that we ensure food is safe and what it says it is, and that consumers and food businesses are confident in the authenticity of food they are buying.”
The NFCU refused to name the retailer or supplier.
