‘Award winning’ kebab company fined £500k after what ‘lamb doner’ was actually made of revealed

A kebab company routinely used goat, turkey, skin, mutton and fat and sold it as lamb to takeaways across the country.

In one lamb doner, produced by Kismet Kebabs, which claimed to contain 87 per cent lamb, turned out to be only 51 per cent meat and 40 per cent fat.

Kismet Kebabs was awarded Best Supplier of the Year in the 2021 British Kebab Awards but that same year, testing showed that some of their doners couldn’t legally be called meat.

The company boasts on its website that it takes ‘pride in producing over 100 tonnes and more of delectable kebab verities [sic] per week’ from its factory in Chelmsford, Essex.

But inspectors found no lamb at its warehouse only ‘significant quantities of lamb fat, skin, goat, mutton, and ovine [sheep meat]’.

Prosecutor Lee Reynolds, told Swansea Crown Court that the Essex-based company had supplied kebabs to takeaways and restaurants around the UK, which had false labels indicating they contained a specific quantity of a specified meat, which the firm knew to be incorrect, and had thereby misled customers.

He 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 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.

A number of samples were taken at takeaways across the city and county, and the results indicated that those taken from kebabs produced by Kismet Kebabs did not match the declared meat content on the product labels.

The court heard that lab test showed the actual meat in the new samples ‘differed significantly’ from what was on the labels, and as a result of the findings the council made enquiries with the National Food Crime Unit, the Food Standards Agency, and other agencies.

The prosecutor said that on May 20, 2021, a multi-agency team lead by Swansea Council trading standards visited the Kismet Kebabs factory and ‘multiple concerns’ were raised about the production, packaging, and labelling of the kebabs.

The barrister said when officers examined recipe cards they saw there was very little actual lamb meat going into what was labelled as ‘lamb kebabs’ with fat, skin, mechanically deboned meat, mutton, goat, and turkey listed. And he said it was evident to officers reviewing the production line that what was going into the machines at one end did not correspond to what was on the labels of the products coming out at the other end.

The barrister said that a ‘major concern’ was that no actual lamb was identified on the premises but instead there were ‘significant quantities of lamb fat, skin, goat, mutton, and ovine’ present.

He said that was concerning ‘given a number of kebabs were being described as lamb’.

The barrister said invoices showed very little lamb was being bought by the company which was instead 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 said 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 barrister 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 the sentencing guidelines for offences involving a firm of the size of Kismet provided a range of fines of between £15m and £24m which he said was ‘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 when the case returned to court for sentencing.

Barrister Stuart Jessop, for the firm, said the company had been established in 2008 and had run successfully for many years without issue 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 since then significant changes and been made.

The barrister said the reality was the company had made ‘very little financial gain’ from the difference between what was on the label and the ingredients which went into the kebabs, and he invited the court to find that it would ‘benefit nobody’ to impose a fine which led to the firm going out of business.

Judge Huw Rees said at the time of the offending, fraudulent activity had been ‘endemic’ at the firm and he said it had engaged in ‘considerable dishonesty’ over a prolonged period.

The judge noted the significant steps the firm had taken in the years since the offending, and he said it was a case where harm was difficult to determine.

Kismet Kebabs Ltd was fined £500,000 and was ordered to pay an agreed sum of £259,298 towards prosecution costs. The firm was given four years to pay.

Kismet Kebabs has been approached for comment.

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