A BIG supermarket chain is being investigated by a food fraud squad after selling South American beef as British.
Products such as mince, burgers and steak had been sold to shoppers as “best British beef” when it was actually being imported from 5,200 miles away.
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The National Food Crime Unit, which is part of the Food Standards Authority, has an investigation codenamed “Operation Hawk” into the fake British beef scandal.
Supermarkets are on high alert about tracing meat suppliers after the horsemeat scandal in 2013, the biggest food fraud of the 21st century.
Burgers at most of the major supermarkets tested positive for horse DNA.
The retailer has pulled products from shelves already.
Spokespeople for Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Aldi, Morrisons, Lidl, Co-op, Waitrose and Iceland confirmed that they were not the supermarket at the centre of the investigation.
The Food Standards Agency refused to confirm which supermarket was at the centre of the organisation saying that it could “jeopardise the investigation and any future proceedings”.
Andrew Quinn, deputy head of NFCU at the Food Standards Agency, said: “The FSA’s National Food Crime Unit is investigating how one UK retailer was supplied with pre-packed meat and deli products labelled as British when they were in fact sourced from South America and Europe.
“The retailer was notified on the same day that we took action against the food business suspected of the fraud and immediately removed all affected products from their shelves.
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“The retailer continues to work closely and cooperatively with the NFCU investigation to progress the case against the supplier.
“This is not a food safety issue but a matter of food fraud.
“Any fraud investigations of this nature take time to go through evidence and bring to any outcome, including any potential prosecution. We take food fraud very seriously and are acting urgently to protect the consumer.”
NFU president Minette Batters told Farmers Weekly that this latest scandal “showed how the system can be abused”.
She added: “Horsegate brought this country, as all food scares do, to a standstill and created a huge level of mistrust. We have to learn lessons from that era.”
Jim Walker, a former NFU Scotland president and Quality Meat Scotland chairman, said: “The price of traceability in South America is a bung.”
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