Millions of takeaway lovers who thought they were eating lamb doner kebabs may have actually been tucking into goat, skin and fat, a court has heard. Kismet Kebabs, one of the UK's largest doner kebab makers, was fined £500,000 after admitting fraud that dates back to 2021, with the company estimated to have made £6m from the deception.
Concerns first emerged when trading standards officers in Swansea began randomly DNA testing doner meat from takeaways in the city in 2020 and 2021. The kebabs, advertised and labelled as containing up to 87% lamb depending on the variety, were meant to be "70% lamb". But tests revealed "less than 10% sheep".
“Kismet Kebabs fined £500k for selling goat, skin and fat as lamb; DNA tests showed less than 10% sheep.”
"I think some customers won't be surprised there's a lot of skin and fat in these products - but I don't think many people will be expecting goat," said Rhys Harries, a Swansea trading standards officer. Investigators raided the Kismet factory in May 2021 to find out what was in the kebabs being sold to fast food outlets across the UK.
"We didn't see any lamb apart from lamb fat," Harries said. "There were pallets of goat, pallets of trim, offcuts with high fat content, boxes of fat, boxes of skin, bits of mutton. It all goes into a massive mincer and comes out looking like Play-Doh."
The Essex-based firm, established in 2008 and producing more than 100 tonnes of kebab varieties every week, said the fraud related to "historical events" over five years ago when they "operated under a different leadership structure". Directors Panayiotis Vasilis Michael and Djemal Enver admitted one count of fraud by false representation.
Harries compared the scale of the fraud to the 2013 horsemeat scandal, when DNA testing revealed horsemeat in beef products across Europe. "It's almost the same as the horsemeat scandal, because of the volume of product that was going out of this factory," he said.
"A consumer buying a kebab knows it's probably not the best quality ingredients, but it's still got to be what it says it is," Harries added. The case raises questions about how many other takeaways may have unwittingly served mislabelled meat to customers over the years.