Restaurant giant Whitbread ‘secretly’ added pork to lasagne in cost-cutting move — and sold nearly 250,000 dishes to unaware diners
Move will cause outrage among Jews and Muslims, whose religions forbid the eating of pork
RESTAURANT giant Whitbread has “secretly” added pork to its lasagne in a cost-cutting move — and sold nearly 250,000 dishes to unaware diners.
Brewers Fayre, Table Table and Whitbread Inn have been serving the meals for three months.
Menus in some outlets still describe the dish as “beef lasagne”.
The move will cause outrage among Jews and Muslims, whose religions forbid the eating of pork.
The Sun has seen the packaging, which diners do not see, for the lasagne served in Whitbread’s restaurants.
The description says it includes a “beef and pork ragu”, while the ingredients confirm it has 8.5 per cent beef and 4.5 per cent pork.
A whistleblower at one restaurant said: “I spotted the packs marked ‘beef lasagne’ started coming in as ‘meat lasagne’. I looked at the ingredients and noticed it actually contains pork and beef.
“I queried it with management but they didn’t care. Three months on and the menus still say beef lasagne, and waiters have not been told to warn customers.”
Thirteen Whitbread Inns and 86 Table Table restaurants still offer diners “beef lasagne”.
Sister chain Brewers Fayre, which has 159 outlets, labels it “lasagne”, but there is no mention that a dish widely assumed to contain only beef also has pork.
Professor Chris Elliott, director of the Institute for Global Food Security in Belfast, said: “I am absolutely horrified. That is deception.
“It has happened either by a terrible cock-up within the company or a deliberate act. Either way it is unacceptable.
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“This appears intentional and there will groups of the population, Muslims perhaps or those allergic to pork, who will be in uproar.
“There is a legal, moral and ethical responsibility around that. Legally, food has to be labelled correctly and that is not happening here.
“Having undeclared meat in food has echoes of the horsemeat scandal. There will need to be an investigation.”
SUPPLIER SCANDAL
THE company that makes the lasagne for Whitbread was also at the centre of the horsemeat scandal in 2013.
Creative Foods supplied the restaurant giant with lasagne that was found to contain horse DNA.
It came after horsemeat was found in frozen burgers in several UK and Irish supermarkets supplied by other firms.
At the time, Creative was owned by food supply giant Brakes, which said it had been let down by its suppliers and apologised to customers.
Brakes sold Creative in 2014 to David Wood Baking, which also supplies Tesco, Asda and Waitrose.
Labelling guidelines from the Food Standards Agency specifically mention lasagne as an example of where companies need to be clear if it contains pork as the dish is “usually made with beef”.
Whitbread’s lasagne is made by Creative Foods in Flint, North Wales. The supplier also hit the headlines in 2013 when it sold lasagne containing horse DNA to Whitbread.
Creative has not returned our calls for comment, but Whitbread insisted it had not broken food labelling laws.
A spokesman said: “We would like to apologise sincerely to our customers for any concern or confusion this may have caused.”
NATIONAL FAVOURITE
LASAGNE as we know it was created in the 14th century near Naples in Italy.
Originally, the word “lasagna” referred to the pot that the meal — made up of layers of pasta, cheese sauce, tomato sauce and beef mince in a ragu — was cooked in. It is the UK’s biggest-selling ready meal and accounts for £1 in every £17 spent on pre-prepared dinners, figures from industry analysts Kantar show. In 2006 lasagne was linked to suspected food poisoning among Tottenham Hotspur players that cost the club a place in the Champions League. It turned out to be the norovirus.