Episode 2 Rip Off Britain: Food

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 that 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 of the stories that 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 plate.

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.

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 that

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 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 Forest, 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 Forest

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.

Still to come on Rip-Off Britain - 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 that

buying two packs of the imported lamb worked out at £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 its 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,

either 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, 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.

For example, there are currently additional checks

on half of all dried beans coming to the UK from Nigeria,

and a fifth of the almonds from Australia.

So, 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.

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?

It's very frustrating because it makes what should be

a quite simple job a lot more complicated and, I think,

some people just give up and so they don't get the best deal.

Maybe you're unsure what to do when you discover you've lost out

and that so-called great deal has ended up costing you money.

People are buying into this, I did, you know,

and are they going to be as awkward with them as they were with me?

You might have a cautionary tale of your own

and want to share the mistakes that you've made with us.

Well, it upsets me an awful lot, because, you know, I'm retired

and I begrudge having to pay that kind of money out.

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.