West Yorkshire laboratory finds third of food products mislabelled

A laboratory in West Yorkshire county council has conducted tests on 900 food samples and confirmed that over a third of them were not what they were claimed to be, or were mislabelled.

Among the test results shared with the Guardian newspaper, beef mince was reportedly found to contain pork or poultry, while a herbal slimming tea was found to contain neither tea nor herbs, but rather glucose powder mixed with a withdrawn prescription drug for obesity at 13 times the normal dose.

In addition to labelling issues in a third of fruit juices, illegal additives were discovered such as brominated vegetable oil, which is used as flame retardant and linked to behavioural problems in rats at high doses.

Experts said they fear the findings are representative of the picture nationally, with consumers at increasing risk, as checks for fake or mislabelled foods are reduced due to budget cuts by many councils.

Shadow environment secretary Maria Eagle said: "Consumers deserve to know what they are buying and eating, and cracking down on the mislabelling of food must become a greater priority for the government."

A Defra spokesperson said: "There are already robust procedures in place to identify and prevent food fraud and the FSA has increased funding to support local authorities to carry out this work to £2m.

"We will continue to work closely with the food industry, enforcement agencies and across government to improve intelligence on food fraud and clamp down on deliberate attempts to deceive consumers."

Trace One senior vice-president Nick Martin said: "We might have thought that, in the wake of the horsemeat crisis, there was greater attention paid to what packaging says versus what the product actually contains.

"Consumer trust is extremely fragile: if they feel that the products they purchase are omitting key ingredients in the packaging, or even actively misleading them, then retailers’ and manufacturers’ reputations will suffer. Another crisis like Horsegate could wreak severe damage on the food industry."