Goat and skin in millions of 'lamb' kebabs compared to horsemeat lasagne scandal

Millions of people are likely to have eaten takeaway kebabs made with goat, skin and fat when they thought they were buying lamb meat, in a fraud that investigators have compared to the 2013 horsemeat lasagne scandal.

BBC News has been told the kebabs from Kismet Kebabs, which describes itself as one of the UK's largest doner kebab makers, were sold to fast food outlets across the country for years.

The firm was fined £500,000 after pleading guilty in court to a fraud that dates back to 2021.

Kismet Kebabs, which is estimated to have made £6m from the fraud, said it related to "historical events that occurred over five years ago" and when they "operated under a different leadership structure".

Kismet Kebabs advertised and labelled its lamb doner kebabs as being made with up to 87% lamb – depending on the kebab.

But concerns were raised when trading standards officers in Swansea began to randomly DNA test doner meat from takeaways in the city in 2020 and 2021.

Kebabs that were meant to be "70% lamb" came back as showing "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 Swansea trading standards officer Rhys Harries.

"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," said Harries.

"It's almost the same as the horsemeat scandal, because of the volume of product that was going out of this factory."

The 2013 horsemeat scandal is one of the most high-profile food fraud crises in recent history, when DNA testing revealed horsemeat in beef products and led to a range of processed foods being withdrawn from sale across Europe.

Investigators raided the Kismet factory in Essex in May 2021 to find out what was in the kebabs, as takeaways thought they were buying lamb as advertised on the package.