The BBC made a Freedom of Information (FoI) to the Food Standards Agency (FSA) for the results of meat product testing by local authorities in 2017. This revealed that out of 665 results from 487 businesses in England, Wales and Northern Ireland collected by the FSA, 145 were partly or wholly made up of unspecified meat. Of these 145 samples,73 came from retailers - including three supermarkets, and a further 50 came from restaurants, while 22 originated from manufacturing or food processing plants. The most commonly mislabelled product was mince, followed by sausages, kebabs and restaurant curries, and lamb products were the most commonly found to contain traces of other animals DNA.
The FSA has responded by stressing that the results are not representative of the food industry. Local authorities taking the samples, were targeting the high risk businesses.
Read the BBC report and the FSA's response
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