Several metric tonnes of frozen goods have been seized, with officials in the belief that they carry a fraudulent approval number.
A man was arrested and later released under investigation, with enquiries still ongoing.
Following the arrest, NFCU officers, working alongside local authority partners, disposed of 25 tonnes of suspected illegal frozen food products in June.
“The use of a fraudulent ID can cause traceability issues,” Quinn told Food Manufacture.
For example, if a product was contaminated or diseased, without an official ID, the industry wouldn’t be able to trace its roots and therefore prevent further damage.
It should be noted, however, there has been no indication of a health risk to the public so far.
Investigations into the wider trade of suspected illegal food products are continuing, with more than seven tonnes apprehended across 111 visits to businesses.
A notice linked to the investigation has also been issued by the authorities across England, Northern Ireland and Wales, alerting any business or consumer that has purchased and sold frozen food products by Inarah Frozen Foods Ltd that they may be unsafe to eat and should be withdrawn from the market and recalled from consumers.
As the alert flags, this impacts all frozen products in Inarah’s Frozen Food, Inarah’s Fine Food, and New York Crispy packaging.
“There’s a wide-ranging list of [affected] commodities, but they are chicken, they are mixed meat, they are vegetables, they are fish – and we’re talking things like chicken nuggets, chicken samosas, vegetable samosas,” Quinn said.
The NFCU boss also added that the items are not being found in large supermarkets.
“We’re recovering these from your small corner shops, retail outlets,” he confirmed.
Since the operation began, a total of 33 tonnes of products have been seized.
“We’re still in very early stages of this, but you can see that this is quite a large-scale fraud investigation that we’ve now taken control of.”
The operation brought together multiple partners across law enforcement, local authorities and trading standards including the Greater Manchester and Staffordshire Police, Stoke as well as Staffordshire Trading Standards.
“This is a great result – removing more than 33 tonnes of suspected illegal frozen food from sale and making it clear that we won’t tolerate businesses who try to mislead customers,” a Stoke-on-Trent City Council spokesperson said.
“We alerted the FSA to investigations we carried out earlier this year, which found a premises was selling frozen food products with fraudulent labels and no traceability.
“Cases like these pose a safety issue to the public and we are continuing to take firm action to remove these products from the market and have been contacting premises who may have received affected products and ensure they are withdrawn and recalled.”
If you suspect food fraud, report it to Food Crime Confidential on food.gov.uk/report or by phoning 0800 028 1180 (0207 276 8787 for non-UK mobiles and calls).
