GONE, we hope, are the days of chalk in flour or horse meat labelled as beef, but food fraud is still happening in Scottish restaurants. The breaches fall under two categories, as identified by the National Food Crime Unit – misrepresentation – “marketing or labelling a product to wrongly portray its quality, safety, origin or freshness”, and substitution – “replacing a food or ingredient with another substance that is similar but inferior”.
The fraud is taking place on restaurant menus, falsely adding brand names and promises of provenance to justify charging higher prices.
Susie and Steven Anderson run East Coast Cured, an award-winning artisan charcuterie company in Leith. Their dry-cured meat products are distinctive and include a fennel salami and a whisky-oak smoked nduja. They first discovered their brand name was being fraudulently used while celebrating their anniversary in a top Scottish hotel.
