A company which supplied kebabs to takeaways and restaurants has been fined £500,000 after Swansea Crown Court heard products labelled as lamb contained little actual lamb.
The court heard Kismet Kebabs Ltd, based in Chelmsford, sold products described as lamb which in reality contained a mixture of fat, skin and other lower-grade meat products. The company was also ordered to pay £259,298 in costs.
Prosecutors said the firm had misled wholesalers, retailers and consumers by labelling products with incorrect meat content. In one example outlined in court, a lamb doner said to contain 87% lamb was found to contain only 51% meat and 40% fat.
The case followed a Swansea Council trading standards exercise in late 2020 and early 2021, when samples taken from local kebab houses and restaurants raised concerns over the meat species and descriptions used on products supplied by Kismet. Further testing found the contents differed significantly from the labelling.
The court heard that when officers visited Kismet’s factory in Chelmsford in May 2021, they found multiple concerns around production, packaging and labelling. Investigators said invoices showed very little lamb was being bought, while the firm was purchasing large amounts of skin, fat, goat and other lower-grade products.
Judge Huw Rees said fraudulent activity had been endemic at the company during the offending period and described the dishonesty as considerable and prolonged. The court heard the business had since made significant changes, and it was given four years to pay the financial penalty and costs.