No lamb in some lamb kebabs, study finds

-Food Safety Authority study also finds beef, chicken in lamb kebabs

Next time you are ordering a lamb doner, consider the possibility that it might come with some free — and undeclared — chicken and beef.

A study by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland has found traces of both beef and chicken in lamb kebabs sold in some independent takeaways in Dublin.

According to the FSAI survey — carried out in collaboration with the HSE last month — meats other than lamb were detected in seven of the 20 foods sampled from independent takeaway restaurants in Dublin, even though the dish was advertised as lamb.

Remarkably, six of the seven foods with undeclared meat were described on the menus/menu boards as lamb kebabs, but most of these did not contain any lamb at all, or else very small quantities.

All six lamb kebabs with undeclared meat contained more than 60% chicken and 5% to 30% beef, while just three of these six lamb kebabs were found to contain lamb, with levels as low as 1% to 5%.

In one of the 10 lamb dishes sampled — identified as minced meat for lamb skewers — almost twice as much beef, at 60%, than lamb (more than 30%), was discovered.

The survey was one of two conducted by the FSAI on the content of food, the other being a study of beef products as part of an ongoing EU-wide programme on food product fraud.

It found no traces of horse DNA in the 52 beef products analysed, with the FSAI declaring that this showed compliance with regulations in the aftermath of the horse burger scandal of last year.

Overall, some 2,622 tests were carried out by the competent authorities in 28 EU countries, as well as Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland.

Just 0.61% of samples tested positive, compared with 4.6% of samples in the first round of testing conducted last year.

The European Commission said that, in the 16 cases that did test positive, appropriate enforcement measures such as market withdrawal, tracing, and re-labelling were being carried out.