An Essex-based company has been slapped with a £500,000 fine for mislabelling lamb kebabs sold in restaurants and takeaways across the UK
An Essex-based company that supplied kebabs to takeaways and restaurants across the UK has been slapped with a £500,000 fine for selling “lamb” that was mostly “skin and fat”.
Swansea Crown Court heard that kebabs produced by Kismet Kebabs Ltd and labelled as lamb contained little actual lamb, instead consisting of a mix of fat, skin, assorted meats and mechanically reclaimed meat products.
The Chelmsford-based firm was fined £500,000 and ordered to pay £259,298 in prosecution costs after a judge said it had engaged in “considerable dishonesty” over a prolonged period of time.
Lee Reynolds, prosecuting on behalf of Swansea Council, told the court the company had fraudulently misled customers by selling falsely labelled kebabs to takeaways and restaurants across the country, Wales Online reports.
Mr Reynolds said: “Much of what was being described as lamb was in fact skin and fat. Despite selling ‘lamb kebabs’ to takeaways and restaurants all over the UK they in fact purchased little or no lamb whatsoever. They purchased lots of other meat or often just skin and fat and simply applied a label at the end of the processing of it describing it as lamb.
“The company routinely and knowingly purchased goat, lamb fat, skin, mutton and ovine [sheep meat], and once processed through their factory sold it as lamb. In addition, other products were sold as specific meat products when the item contained meat of a different species.”
The court heard that in late 2020 and early 2021 Swansea Council’s trading standards team took part in a regional sampling exercise to check the meat species and descriptions applied to kebab meat at local kebab houses and restaurants.
The results indicated that samples taken from kebabs produced by Kismet Kebabs Ltd did not match the declared meat content on the product labels. In light of the results, further samples were bought from local wholesalers.
The court heard that lab tests showed the actual meat in the new samples “differed significantly” from what was on the labels. Following the findings, the council made enquiries with the National Food Crime Unit, the Food Standards Agency, and other agencies.
The court heard that Essex County Council had a “long history” of involvement with Kismet Kebabs through a Primary Authority Partnership.
As part of the arrangement, the council received complaints from local authorities across England about the firm’s labelling and meat content. In one case, a lamb doner advertised as containing 87 per cent lamb was found to contain just 51 per cent meat and 40 per cent fat.
Essex Council eventually terminated the partnership, citing a “lack of cooperation”, a “failure to heed our advice, and the serious labelling and potential public health issues” found during an audit of the factory. The council said it had “lost all confidence with Kismet to fulfil their obligation with the partnership and to work with us on improving their technical processes and labelling”.
The prosecutor said a multi-agency team led by Swansea Council Trading Standards visited Kismet Kebabs’ factory in Chelmsford on May 20, 2021, where officers raised “multiple concerns” about the production, packaging and labelling of its kebabs.
The court heard that when officers examined recipe cards they found very little actual lamb was being used in products labelled as “lamb kebabs”. Instead, ingredients included fat, skin, mechanically deboned meat, mutton, goat and turkey.
Mr Reynolds said a “major concern” was that no actual lamb was identified on the premises, despite several products being marketed as lamb. Instead, officers found “significant quantities of lamb fat, skin, goat, mutton and ovine”.
He said invoices showed the company was buying very little lamb while purchasing a “large volume of skin, fat, ovine, goat, and lower grade ‘meat’ products that cannot be called meat as per the legal definition”.
He added that it was also a concern that the company was producing mechanically derived meat made up of “predominantly neck trim, mutton trim, water and ice” and that these lower quality items were being counted towards their product’s actual meat content declaration.
The prosecutor said the company had engaged in “organised, planned, unlawful activity” and had “misled wholesalers, retailers and consumers”, and he said the firm had taken steps to conceal what it was doing from Essex Council officers.
Mr Reynolds added that sentencing guidelines suggested a fine of between £15m and £24m for a company of Kismet’s size, but said such a penalty would be “wholly unrealistic” and would inevitably lead to the liquidation of the company.
Kismet Kebabs Ltd, of Chelmsford, Essex, had previously pleaded guilty to one count of fraud by false representation.
Stuart Jessop, mitigating, said the company had been established in 2008 and had run successfully for many years, providing good products to customers throughout the country. He said it was accepted that at the time of the offending the firm had “taken its eye off the ball” but said significant changes had since been made.
The barrister said the company had made “very little financial gain” from the difference between what was on the label and the ingredients used in its kebabs, and argued it would “benefit nobody” if a fine forced the business to close.
Judge Huw Rees said fraudulent activity had been “endemic” at the firm during the offending period and that it had engaged in “considerable dishonesty” over a prolonged period.
However, he acknowledged the significant improvements made since then and said the harm caused was difficult to quantify. The company was given four years to pay the fine and costs.
