Restaurant giant Whitbread ‘secretly’ added pork to lasagne in cost-cutting move — and sold nearly 250,000 dishes to unaware diners

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.

“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.”