Episode 2 Rip Off Britain

There's a lot we don't know about the food on our plates.

And the shops and the labels don't always tell you the whole story.

I think they encourage you to buy more than you need

and that causes a lot of waste.

Whether you're staying in or going out, you've told us you can

feel ripped off by the promises made about what you eat,

and what you pay for it.

How do you know that it's half price?

So what they've done,

they've bumped the price up and then knocked it down.

From claims that don't stack up

to the secrets behind the packaging,

we'll uncover the truth about Britain's food,

so you can be sure you are getting what you expect -

at the right price!

Your food. Your money.

This is Rip Off Britain.

Hello and welcome to a special series of Rip Off Britain,

investigating the truth about something that's a huge part

of every household's spending, and that's food.

But when it comes to what we eat,

it's not just what we pay for it that we mind about.

Just as important is what's in it, and where it's come from.

But when you think about it - the journey of our raw ingredients

before they ever arrive on our plates can be much more complicated

than you'd ever imagine, whether that's because

they've come from thousands of miles away or literally just up the road.

But you may not always get all the information

you need to know from whoever's selling them,

or indeed from what it says on the label or the packet.

But you know however far our food has travelled, any gaps

in the detail of where it's come from can lead to serious problems.

So at the root of all the stories we're going to be investigating

today is how much we know about where our food started out,

and what that means for its price, and even for its safety.

And we'll also be discovering why it is that near identical words

on the packaging can mean very different things

when it comes to what's actually inside.

Coming up, how an illegal trade in food foraged from the forest

could mean it's poisonous mushrooms that end up on your plates.

We probably take around 200 calls each year from doctors,

nurses and paramedics about suspected poisoning with fungi.

With so many sheep in British fields,

why do we still buy in thousands of tonnes of lamb from New Zealand?

From June till January, you know, there really is no need then.

At that time we have a plentiful supply and it's a good,

healthy, wholesome product at the best possible price.

And the dairy farmer going back to the past as he battles to

save his business.

But is what he's selling safe?

Come and try some unpasteurised milk!

Raw milk straight from the farm!

You only have to turn on the latest TV cookery show these days to find

a celebrity chef who's talking about how important it is that the food

that we eat is seasonal, fresh, and that we know where it comes from.

And if it comes from nearby, then all the better.

But it does seem that there's one particular food where the

demand for it to be fresh,

seasonal and locally sourced could cause more harm than good.

And that's mushrooms.

Now, the best mushrooms are considered a real delicacy

and may well be priced accordingly.

But there are fears that not every mushroom that

finds its way from the forest onto the market, or indeed a restaurant

menu, has been picked by someone who really knows what they're doing.

And if they've mistaken a delicious mushroom for a deadly one,

the repercussions could be lethal.

Sara Cadbury is on the hunt for a tasty treat.

Ooh, there's some puff balls.

They're busy releasing their spores. Look at that.

Wow, look at that! That's impressive.

She's looking to see which of the mushrooms

she finds could make a tasty treat.

And the ancient woodland of the New Forest in Hampshire

is the perfect spot to find them.

Very common, grows on most kinds of wood.

Pretty thing.

And there's never been a better time to forage,

with many well-known chefs extolling the culinary benefits

of picking your own tasty fungi.

But it's not just the taste that makes these specimens so precious.

With more and more restaurants serving up the delicacy,

these forest fungi have also become very valuable.

The mushrooms are definitely sold on to the London restaurants,

where they are advertised as a freshly picked New Forest

mushrooms, and then can command, really, a very good price.

Wild, locally picked mushrooms can sell for anywhere between

£20 and £50 a kilo.

But Sara, who's a member of a local group that monitors the forest

mushrooms, is worried that during the peak foraging season

from September to November, the forest is attracting not just those

who want to sample the fungi for themselves,

but also those who want to cash in.

People have come in minibuses, and they walk line abreast through

the woods and then that minibus will pick them up sort of a mile

away the other side of the wood.

And they will have picked pounds and pounds and pounds of fungi,

which is a very valuable haul.

But it's not just the damage to the forest that this mass-scale

foraging is causing. If the people picking them and may be going on to

sell them to markets or restaurants, have mistaken a poisonous mushroom

for an edible one, the consequences can be disastrous.

Well, I just noticed this - it's definitely not an edible mushroom

although it probably wouldn't poison you,

but it would give you a stomach upset, but this is

the sort of thing that could be collected by commercial pickers.

And the authorities around forests where these fungi flourish

are worried about where they could end up next.

They fear poisonous mushrooms could end up being sold on to

restaurants or find their way into our own kitchens.

So they're determined to stop that happening.

You know there's nothing quite like the smell of a newly picked

fungi or mushroom.

It really is quite exceptional.

And providing in the New Forrest I wasn't to pick more than 1.5 kilos,

I'd be well within the law.

But here in Epping Forest, which is right on the edge

of the City of London, it is absolutely illegal

and has been for centuries.

But more recently, foraging for fungi, for mushroom

has become such a huge problem that they now have forest keepers

who patrol the whole forest and uphold the bylaws.

And if you took anything out of the forest, you'd be prosecuted.

Last year, Epping Forest prosecuted 20 people for illegal

mushroom foraging.

Nick Baker, the senior forest keeper, patrols the area.

So how big has the problem become?

It's been a really big problem.

Last year, we had issues with car parks that normally only

have four or five cars, had 40 cars in. It was as obvious as that.

And people were going out and just disappearing in large groups,

just picking whatever they found, some edible, some inedible.

On one Saturday alone, I confiscated 50 kilos.

And that was just a very small percentage of what we were losing.

Morning patrols like this one are a way of clamping down

and protecting the 1,600 species of fungi that grow in the forest.

Well, we have increased patrolling in areas

where we know they're going to be.

We will take them to court and will prosecute them

under the Epping Forest Act.

And it's not an insignificant amount.

It's £200 maximum fine,

and with adds to that cost, you're looking at £300-£400.

With names like 'the destroying angel', 'panther cap', 'death cap',

it doesn't take me to you tell you there are some

mushrooms and fungi in British woodland that are best avoided.

But when you've got individuals who are foraging and sweeping up

everything in sight because all they're interested in is the money

they can make from mushrooms, how can we be sure they have the

knowledge to be able to distinguish

between the delicious and the downright dangerous?

Ecologist DR Jeremy Dagley also works in Epping Forrest

and sees the hazards that illegal foraging can pose.

So how experienced do you need to be to be able to

differentiate between the safe and the killers?

You really do need to know your stuff.

You need to know the varieties and variations.

And if you're putting them in a bag together

and they're breaking up, you can't be sure which bits you've got.

And to the untrained, foraging eye, searching for the right

mushrooms to eat can be tricky.

So what have you found there, Jeremy?

You get these fungi that help sustain the beech tree

and actually feed it.

But they're a species that include edible ones and non-edible ones,

even toxic ones.

And the one you're holding there will make you very ill.

You can see they're breaking up.

So again, in a large polythene bag, you'll have all of these bits mixed

in together and you're never going be able to distinguish, are you?

-No.

-Unless you are a real expert.

And if you get sick, unless you know the species of mushroom

you've eaten, it can be hard to know how to treat the poisoning.

Dr John Thompson is the director

of The National Poisons Information Service in Cardiff.

We probably take around 200 calls each year from doctors,

nurses, paramedics about suspected poisoning with fungi.

And about ten times that, a couple thousand enquiries on our online

database each year from people who think they may have been poisoned.

The service's busiest time coincides with the peak of the mushroom

foraging season.

If you eat a mushroom that's poisonous,

there's several different types of poisoning that can happen.

The most common thing is gastrointestinal disturbance.

You'll feel nauseated, you might vomit, you might have some tummy

trouble, and for most mushrooms, that's all that's going to happen.

Unfortunately, for some of the more toxic mushrooms,

you can then go on to develop either liver failure or kidney failure.

So, if you're tempted by foraged mushrooms,

the best advice is simple...

Make sure you know what you're doing.

If you don't know what it is, don't eat it.

If you're buying mushrooms, you need to buy them from a reliable,

reputable source.

Now where would we be without milk?

Here in the UK, we buy over

five billion litres of the stuff every year.

And in case you're interested,

that's enough to fill 4,500 swimming pools.

But with supermarkets waging price wars over the cost of a pinta,

dairy farmers are left increasingly upset by the dwindling amount

the stores are paying them for their milk.

So it's perhaps no wonder that some of those farmers are turning

to new ways to make extra income from their herds.

But one solution that's been growing in popularity,

especially at farmers' markets, has caused a bit of a stir,

even though it's the most traditional type of milk you

could possibly get.

It's one of the most hard-fought battlegrounds in the countryside

and it's made headlines again this year.

On one side of the dairy wars - the supermarkets,

determined to sell the white stuff as cheaply as possible.

On the other - the farmers who say they've been

backed into a corner and forced to sell their milk at a loss.

It's been a long-running battle that's forced some dairy farmers

to give up, sell their herds, and close their farms for good -

a difficult decision that Sussex farmer Stephen Hook

has faced in the past.

We were struggling.

We were being paid, effectively by the supermarkets,

below the cost of production or at the cost of production, and you can

bear that for a short time but for it to be going for years and years.

But rather than shut up shop, in 2007,

Stephen took the decision to transform his business by

finding a brand-new market for one very old-fashioned kind of milk -

one that brings in eight times as much money

as the milk he used to sell.

Come and try some unpasteurised milk!

Raw milk straight from the farm!

Half-pint glass only £1!

Yes, Stephen's selling

the most back-to-basics dairy product there is -

raw milk.

Milked yesterday afternoon.

Most milk is pasteurised before it's put on sale.

But raw milk has a much quicker journey from cow to container.

Go on, get up. Get up, go on.

In fact, it goes through three filters before it's chilled

and sold to the public.

Fans of raw milk say it's fresher,

tastier and healthier than the regular pasteurised kind.

It's a very, very fast chilling and filtering process immediately

after the cows milked to really capture that freshness.

But raw milk has its critics too.

When milk is pasteurised, any nasties inside are wiped out.

But raw milk never goes through that process.

So some say there is a real risk of harmful pathogens

and bacteria still being present.

To protect against that, Stephen

and other raw milk farmers like him work hard to make sure

the milking parlour is kept as clean as any other food preparation area.

We do our absolute best to produce clean milk week in, week out.

We've never had a case of food poisoning in the seven years

that we've been selling raw milk.

But I cannot say that there is not a risk with raw milk.

Similarly, I cannot say there's no risk with any food.

Of course, it might be easier

if the cows respected the clean standards that Stephen likes

to keep in the milking parlour.

We are dealing with live animals.

They will come into the milking parlour

and sometimes do what animals do.

So whatever's going on in the milking parlour,

the key moment is ensuring that the teat is clean

and that it's a clean unit, you should produce clean milk.

And Stephen regularly sends samples of milk, butter

and cream to be tested to make sure it's fit for human consumption.

We test our milk every week

so we know what our pathogen levels are,

and if we've got good results,

we don't sit back and think we've cracked it.

We've just got to keep on top of it the whole time.

Never be complacent.

But however high the standards, raw milk

is still a controversial product, even at a local farmers' market.

I wouldn't want to drink raw milk

because of the bacteria in there because it hasn't been pasteurised.

It's completely natural, straight from the cow,

straight into a cup then...what's the problem?

I'm very happy to try it, I eat cheese the whole time and frankly

you pick up more on the underground than you would drinking raw milk.

And it's attitudes like that which in 2011 led to Stephen

installing a raw milk vending machine in Selfridges'

flagship London store.

People loved it.

Every time somebody put coins into the machine,

opened the cupboard door,

held their bottle up to the nozzle and pressed the button

and saw milk going into their bottle, they smiled. Every time.

The machine was a big hit, but two years later,

Stephen reluctantly agreed to remove it after

the Food Standards Agency argued that the sale of raw drinking milk

from retail outlets was a breach of food hygiene laws.

But those rules haven't stopped raw milk becoming ever more popular,

thanks in part to endorsements from celebrity chefs and food writers,

all of which of course only stoked

the fires of controversy even more, with recent reports linking

raw milk with cases of E coli poisoning in children.

It's incidents like these,

which led The Food Standards Agency to re-evaluate the rules around

the sale of raw milk in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Some are calling for an outright ban as there has been in Scotland

for more than 30 years.

The incidents and frequency of outbreaks

related to raw drinking milk,

that's becoming increasingly rare over the past couple of decades.

But that's not to say there is no risk,

and actually in autumn of 2014, there were three separate incidents

involving of handful of cases of E coli 0157 that

were potentially linked to consumption of raw drinking milk.

So the risks are still there.

What the current controls are designed to do is to balance

management of the public health risks and maintaining consumer choice,

and that's what we're doing at the moment.

Despite the risks,

Stephen thinks a total ban would be an overreaction.

If raw milk was banned I would still sell raw milk.

Now that might sound a bit shocking

because I'm going to be breaking the law.

All other food has got risk,

and the FSA seem to accept the risk with other food.

But they seem to not have any tolerance of risk with raw milk.

So for now at least, Stephen is determined to keep selling

raw milk to whoever wants to buy it.

Still to come on Rip Off Britain...

Are we being told porkies

when it comes to how the pigs whose meat we eat were reared?

Or is the truth simply that what it says on the label

doesn't mean what you think?

They sell a product that the public come along and buy

because they feel that, "Oh, it's outdoor bred.

"It must be living outdoors. It's had a happy life,"

when that is not actually the case.

And they look harmless enough,

but what secrets could these innocent-looking foods be hiding?

Now you might expect that the food that's been shipped or flown

halfway across the globe is going to cost an awful lot more

than the equivalent from your own doorstep.

But that's not always the case, particularly

when it comes to one of Britain's favourite foods - lamb.

For some reason, meat that may not have travelled all

that far from, say from a farm somewhere in Britain,

is going to often cost a good bit more than the stuff

that comes from a lot further afield.

So I've been trying to find out why.

Every year, more than 16 million lambs are born in the UK.

But despite that plentiful supply, annually, we still import

more than 60,000 tonnes of lamb all the way from...

New Zealand. Now when you're out shopping, you may not bother

to spend too much time examining the labels on the food you're

buying, but British lamb like this, which just came from a few

miles down the road from where I am now in Wales, has to

compete for supermarket shelf space with New Zealand lamb like this,

which has travelled 11,000 miles from the other side of the world.

Even at the peak of the British lamb season,

when UK farms produce more lamb than at any other time of the year,

we still import the stuff halfway around the planet.

And though prices do vary,

the New Zealand lamb will usually cost around the same,

or sometimes even less

than the lamb that's been born and bred in Britain.

I wanted to find out how that could possibly be the case,

so I've come to John Davies' farm in the Brecon Beacons.

It's home to 1,000-strong flock of prime Welsh sheep, and when I

went to visit in October, it was one of the busiest periods of the year.

That is some view, John. I have to say, look at all those sheep.

The hills are alive with the sound of bleating. We are surrounded

by so many sheep, why are we importing so much New Zealand lamb?

Well, I don't know. It's a little frustrating especially

during the times of peak production.

From June till January, you know, there really is no need then.

At that time, we have a plentiful supply and it's a good, healthy,

wholesome product at the best possible price.

So are you saying that in season, when British lamb is plentiful,

that the price is comparable with

that of the imported New Zealand lamb.

Well, we are actually cheaper at the present time

and the wholesalers can't buy New Zealand lamb cheaper than what

they can buy British at the present time.

But John, like lots of other farmers,

is worried that the cheaper British lamb prices in peak season

may not always be passed on to the consumer.

It's disappointing to us when on farm lamb is 40 pence a kilo

cheaper, and to the consumer it's actually 27 pence a kilo

more expensive. We want to see the price coming down then in the store.

We compared the price of lamb from Britain and New Zealand at two of

the major supermarkets that stocked them both at the peak of the season.

And at the time we checked, in November, the costs didn't

quite reflect the abundance of cheap British lamb that you might expect.

At Asda, British and New Zealand legs of lamb were the same

price all month - £7 a kilo,

even though the New Zealand ones had flown halfway around the world.

But at Tesco, an offer on lamb leg steaks from New Zealand meant

buying two packs of the imported lamb worked out £1.66 per kilo -

cheaper than buying the home-grown stuff.

And even without that offer, the store's British and New Zealand

lamb steaks would have cost exactly the same for the first three weeks

of the month, despite the distance the foreign ones had travelled.

Pricing like this has landed supermarkets

in hot water in the past,

with Welsh farmers protesting that the pricing of their lamb is unfair

and they've complained to the stores that ran promotional offers

on New Zealand lamb at the height of the British lamb season.

So how can it be that lamb flown from so far away can

compete on price with the meat from so much closer to home?

Well, put simply, it's because New Zealand has so many sheep!

John's 1,000-strong flock may sound like an awful lot of sheep,

and actually it is compared with most UK farms,

but when it comes to numbers, then New Zealand sheep farmers

really do have the edge on their British counterparts.

There's a staggering 29 million sheep in New Zealand.

And to find out more, we set up an online chat with

the head of their farmers' union.

Rick, can you explain to me the economics of this

and how it is that New Zealand sheep farmers are able to send lamb

11,000 miles to British supermarkets and still make it pay?

It's a combination of a number of things.

One of things is very good genetics.

There's been a lot of work done in New Zealand on sheep genetics.

The other big factor is our climate.

We can graze our sheep outdoors all year round,

and so it's very low cost.

And very, very good grass clover pastures and low labour inputs

is probably the key.

UK shoppers were first introduced to New Zealand lamb in the 1950s,

and there then followed a decades-long marketing campaign

to convince us that their lamb was better than ours.

New Zealand lamb shoulder meat is always delicious.

And to the despair of British sheep farmers,

that's a message that some consumers have swallowed.

But it's not all bad news for UK farmers.

In recent years, the amount of New Zealand lamb we've imported

has declined by almost a fifth,

thanks in part to supermarkets like Sainsbury's, Aldi and Lidl

pledging to stock only British lamb at the peak of the season.

And for a number of years, Morrisons has gone one step further, getting

the majority of it's lamb from British farmers all year round.

Because we work directly with the farmers they know us,

they're used to working with us,

they put aside some of their stock so we can buy lamb later or

even late lamb, or we can buy hoggets, which is a year-old lamb.

It's good for us, we get British lamb all year round.

It's good for them, they get a more stable income across the year.

How can you make it economically viable?

Morrisons is a bit different from other supermarkets

cos we're a food manufacturer as well.

People think you can only use certain cuts of lamb,

you can only use a lamb leg and that's the only bit people go for.

That's not true at all. There's a huge range of it,

but I think that sometimes people don't recognise that. We try

and use the full carcass cos it's good for sustainability and

there's some really great things you can do with different parts of lamb.

We asked Tesco and Asda

whether they have any plans to follow other supermarkets

in stocking just British lamb at the peak of the season.

Tesco told us it sells...

And when it's in season, "most of the lamb"

on their shelves is British.

And when we asked Asda how British and New Zealand lamb could be

priced identically at the height of the British season, it said

that where its meat comes from "has no influence" on price.

They simply...

Asda went on to say that it does stock lamb from Wales, Scotland

and Northern Ireland all year round,

but that the store simply has to import some lamb from New Zealand,

because British consumers eat...

And there...

So it seems that one key to making British lamb cheaper

could be for us to eat a wider variety of cuts.

And that's a passion for this Michelin star-winning chef.

Stephen Terry insists on using local Welsh lamb

in his Abergavenny restaurant.

And not just the popular cuts of meat,

but the ones that British farmers often struggle to sell at home

and have to export overseas.

Less popular ones are the ones being exported, are the neck -

in France it's very popular.

-Lots of meat on it too.

-Yeah, it's good.

It comes down further as you can see as well.

And this part here is what would be called a belly on a pork,

but on a lamb it's referred to as a breast.

It's not utilised as much as it should be and it can save you money.

So give me a few ideas then of how we can get better value

out of all of these cuts, maybe the more popular

and familiar ones as well as the less familiar ones.

Well, for me, it's about slow-cooking

because people associate a leg or a shoulder of lamb really with a

Sunday roast, whereas you can slow-cook a shoulder or a leg

throughout the day for your evening meal

any day of the week for a mid-week meal.

Well, there's only one way to find out if Stephen's right.

I have to put my hand up and admit

I love to cook and I love to eat.

I have never before eaten or cooked lamb breast,

but that is absolutely delicious.

That's definitely going to be on the menu from now on.

So it took just one meal to convert me to those cheaper cuts of lamb.

Admittedly, I did have Michelin-starred help,

but even without Stephen there,

this is definitely something I'll be trying at home.

And while that alone may not be the answer that British sheep

farmers are after, it's definitely moving one step closer to the day

when it's perhaps British lamb

that will be filling the supermarket shelves.

Now, as an island with a pretty wet and not-so-warm climate,

we need to buy in a lot of what we like to eat from overseas.

But while we import from all over the planet,

some of the food coming through our ports and airports

might not have been treated with the same strict safety standards

as it would have if it had been produced here in the UK.

So it could pose a serious risk if it were to go on sale.

Whether it's rice from India,

nuts from Brazil or tuna from the Seychelles,

almost a fifth of the food

we eat in the UK every year is brought in from outside Europe.

And that means it may not always have been grown, farmed or made

in the same way as if it had come from the UK.

Even so, everything that's sold here - wherever it's come from -

has to meet the same standards for hygiene, cleanliness,

additives and chemicals as anything that is grown or made here.

Jon Griffin and his team at Kent Scientific are one of ten UK

local authority labs charged with inspecting the food and drink

we import from abroad, and intercepting anything

that might be dangerous before it ends up in our trolleys.

So, John, you're bringing me a few goodies, are you?

Yes. I'm bringing you a trolley of a selection of foods, which have

been listed with some potential issues in terms of their safety.

So you want to poison me really?

I'm going to test you more than anything else

to see whether you would know what the problems are.

The EU has some of the most stringent food

restrictions in the world.

And while of course most of the food we import from outside Europe

succeeds in meeting them, some of it doesn't,

often because it contains banned additives,

or the additives are at dangerously high levels.

It's fruit and veg that we buy in more than anything else -

£9 billion worth in 2013.

But in a recent shipment of apricots like these from Turkey,

John's team found dangerous levels of an artificial additive.

The problem with the apricots, and whether you know this or not,

they do have a preservative, especially when they're this colour.

Do you mean a natural preservative?

-It's not a natural preservative, it's an artificial additive.

-OK.

And that's called sulphur dioxide. And sulphur dioxide is also

an allergen, so at too high levels it can cause problems,

especially for people who have got breathing problems such as asthma.

So how high were the levels?

Well, the levels were certainly in excess of 2,000 parts per million,

-which is a lot in terms of an additive level.

-Wow!

The apricots had far more sulphur dioxide than the EU allows,

so if they had made it on sale, they could have had serious

implications for anybody with breathing difficulties.

Laboratories like this do random spot checks on shipments of food

coming into ports right across the country,

and if just one of those tests finds something

that breaks the rules, then everything from that supplier might

have to be checked until they can prove they've cleaned up their act.

The tests can also show

if food has somehow been contaminated thanks to poor hygiene,

as was the case with a recent shipment of sesame seeds like these.

These have come from India,

and the issues with sesame seeds have been more to do with hygiene,

so they're finding bacteria, especially salmonella.

Because of bad handling?

Bad handling, obviously the source of salmonella is animals,

so, yes, it's probably down to poor hygiene.

These are monkey nuts, nuts in shells from Brazil,

and these have been found to have higher levels of aflatoxin in them.

If they're stored poorly in a high climate, high humidity, moulds

can grow, and if the moulds grow and mature, then the toxins will form.

If the sesame seeds or monkey nuts hadn't been seized and stopped

from going on sale, the food poisoning they could have caused

wouldn't have been detected until someone fell ill after eating them.

So would all these foods that you've talked about so far,

would they therefore be taken off the shelves?

They would be stopped at source. If they've come in through imports,

they would be stopped and rejected and either destroyed

or exported back. Once they find a problem, then

there will be a routine stop on that product until that problem goes away.

And it's not just shipments from one bad supplier that might be affected.

In some cases, all products originating from a particular area

may have extra inspections to be sure there isn't a wider problem.

At the moment, there are around 40 products on an EU-wide

list of imports that are given these additional checks

because of problems in the past.

These include half of all melons coming to the UK from Nigeria,

and half of all basmati rice from Pakistan.

Jon's confident that everything possible is being done

to stop toxic imports from hitting the shelves.

The final warning is they have been identified as having problems.

They are not on the shelves at the moment.

They did not get past import.

But, the important thing is just to stay vigilant

and we will keep weeding them out as they come through.

We won't be nibbling on these things, will we?

No, definitely not on those ones.

With so many products competing for space on the supermarket shelf,

the labels on food have to work really hard to grab our attention

and convince us to buy one product rather than another.

When buying meat, many of us want the reassurance

that the animals have been treated well,

so we might look for a label that puts across that message.

But when we looked behind some of the labels that might lead

you to think an animal has had a healthy

and happy outdoor upbringing, we discovered the truth was not

always what the marketing might lead you to believe.

Sausages, mm. Bacon, yum!

The traditional British fry-up

is the favourite breakfast of many of us.

But how often do we stop to think about where that meat comes from?

Research shows that half of us say we're worried about animal welfare,

and sales of so-called ethical food and drink

have more than tripled in the past 15 years.

But when it comes to pork, it isn't always easy to understand how

exactly the pigs, the meat comes from, are reared.

Packets can come with a bewildering array of descriptions like

'free-range', 'outdoor reared' and 'outdoor bred',

all designed to showcase the meat's welfare credentials.

But would you know what those terms actually mean?

We set up a stall in Bury Market, to see how many passing shoppers

could tell us the difference between them.

Outdoor reared, I'm not too sure about that.

-It's similar to outdoor bred.

-It is, isn't it?

It's confusing.

I think outdoor reared means the pig spends most of its life outside.

Well, it all seems like the same thing, free-range,

outdoor bred, all outdoors.

You too might assume that use of the word 'outdoor'

means that the pigs spent most of their time outside.

But in fact, it's not that simple.

Iain O'Reilly's family has farmed these Lancashire

hills for 500 years.

His pigs are organic,

which means they spend at least 80% of their lives outside.

But that's not typically the case with pigs that are called

'outdoor bred' or 'outdoor reared',

which is why Iain thinks the terms are confusing,

because pigs described that way probably won't have spent

as much of their lives outdoors as you might assume.

Outdoor bred means that pigs are born outdoors,

so the sow gives birth outdoors, when they're weaned

they come back inside, so that can take place about four weeks of age.

That means outdoor bred pigs can spend

up to 80% of their lives inside.

Pigs described as outdoor reared do get some more time outside,

but again, not as much as you might expect.

Outdoor reared actually means they've got to spend half

of their life outdoors, but half of its life has been spent inside.

It was concern on this point that in 2010 led to adverts by Waitrose for

their outdoor bred pork being banned because it was claimed people

might be assume the pigs spent their entire life outdoors.

Now in fact Waitrose is a store that has unusually high welfare

standards when it comes to pigs.

It told us all its pork, bacon and ham - even its cheapest products -

comes from British outdoor bred or outdoor reared pigs,

and customers can be confident...

It added that its pork is sourced only from its own farmers,

all of whom are RSPCA Freedom Food accredited,

and that while the pigs that move inside live in bright,

airy straw-bedded barns,

the sows remain living outside for their entire life.

But as far as Iain's concerned,

right across the industry, the terms 'outdoor bred' and 'outdoor reared'

are being used in a way that's confusing for customers.

What the terms do very well is they sell a product that

the public come along and buy because they feel that,

"Oh, it's outdoor bred. It must be living outdoors.

"It's had a happy life. It's foraging, it's rooting around

"and digging up acorns and all sorts,"

when that is not actually the case.

The terms are quite misleading really.

In fact, only around 2% of Britain's pigs are truly free-range,

spending the majority of their lives outside.

Much of that free-range meat is sold directly by the farmers

or through butchers and restaurants,

although there are big name stores that sell it, particularly Waitrose.

But, on a typical supermarket shop elsewhere,

you're more likely to be choosing between pork that's

labelled as outdoor reared, outdoor bred, or indeed that doesn't give

any clue as to what amount of time the pig might have spent outdoors.

A recent survey found that 83% of people asked would like to see

the method of farming clearly marked on the front of their meat.

And after being flummoxed by what the labels we showed them

actually meant, some of those shoppers we met in Bury might agree.

When they say outdoors, you expect them to be outdoors,

not in, like, sheds and all that.

Basically, it's misleading.

They breed them outside and then bring them in.

It should be explained a lot better.

Well, in 2010, most of the big supermarkets signed up to

a code of practice supposed to do just that.

In particular, the big stores agreed to explain on their packaging more

detail of how outdoor bred or reared pigs are farmed so that customers

wouldn't assume they'd spent more time outdoors than they had.

And they agreed that where possible, this information

would be in the same field of vision on the label

as terms such as 'outdoor bred'.

But fast forward to today and when we went round the supermarkets

looking for that kind of labelling, we couldn't always find it.

We went round branches of the four main supermarkets

in Manchester looking for any prepacked, own-label meats

described as outdoor bred or outdoor reared.

And while some did have the information to clarify

what that meant, others didn't.

For example, in the Sainsbury's we went to,

it was there on the label of the outdoor bred bacon and sausages,

but not on the outdoor reared loin steak.

Similarly, at a nearby Tesco,

the label on the outdoor bred bacon explained what the term meant,

but there was no such information on the outdoor reared pork chops.

At Asda, we could only find on that day two own-label outdoor bred

or reared pork products, and neither of them

included the additional farming information on the label.

But at Morrisons, both the two outdoor bred pork items

we found did have the detail of what that term meant.

When we asked the stores why their products didn't always

display the information they'd agreed to put there,

Tesco and Sainsbury's both said that while their labelling...

..and includes voluntary information they've signed up to...

They stressed that when they can't fit it on the label,

detailed information on their farming and welfare standards

is available online.

Meanwhile, Asda said the vast majority of its pork does have...

But it agreed there seem to "some inaccuracies"

in the products we saw, which it's looking into.

We also spoke to DEFRA, the government agency responsible

for setting the labelling guidelines,

who reiterated how important it is that the information on the label

is accurate, telling us it was...

..so shoppers can...

And for some of the shoppers we met in Bury Market,

it seems that can't come soon enough.

Because a few of them were still surprised to discover

the use of the word 'outdoor'

doesn't necessarily mean a pig has spent its whole life outdoors.

It is confusing for, I would say, most people.

Outdoor bred means the same. You imagine it to be outdoor bred,

outside till they're actually killed.

Very, very misleading on packages.

Here at Rip Off Britain, we're always ready to investigate

more of your stories on any subject.

Confused over your bills or just trying to wade through

never-ending small print?

You can write to us at...

Or send us an e-mail to...

The Rip Off team is ready and waiting to investigate your stories.

Well, as we've seen today,

it's really important that we know the full background

of the food we eat -

where it's from, how it was made, and exactly what's in it.

It's certainly reassuring to see how many people

and organisations there are finding all that out on our behalf,

but it really does pay to understand some of it ourselves, especially

when the words on the label may not always mean quite what you think!

But these days, of course, some people are much more bothered about

whether they're getting fresh local ingredients than perhaps

they were in the past, which is why so many menus outline in great

detail where absolutely everything's come from.

And thankfully, the cases of them getting it wrong,

as they could with those foraged mushrooms, are few and far between.

So perhaps it's no wonder that when things do go wrong with our food

it can make national headlines,

so we do really have to rely on those people who are responsible

for checking that everything we buy is safe and as it should be.

Well, I'm afraid that's all we have time for today,

but we'll be back to investigate more stories very soon, so please

do keep sending them in to is on any topic of course, not just food.

We really do love receiving them.

But in the meantime, from everyone on the team...

-Bye-bye.

-Bye-bye!

-Bye.