What's this? Butchers accused of ripping off shoppers

Lee Castle, 59, butcher and owner of Here, an organic shop and butchers in Sydney Street, Chelsea, said he knew of butchers who had duped customers into buying cheap cut, non organic meat wrongly labelled as organic and sold at a premium price.

His concerns follow a report in last week's Journal about a television programme which secretly filmed butchers in the South West who allegedly sold conventional meat as organic produce. Castle says the same thing was happening in the South East. "These butchers tend to purchase whole organic chickens from a reputable supplier, lift the label off the chicken, laminate that label and re-use it on a non-organic chicken.

"They can buy a £1 chicken from Smithfield Market and sell it on for £15 - it's so so open. I've talked to Trading Standards, but all they've got to go on is the paperwork which is hard to trace."

Castle is licensed to sell organic and organic bio-dynamic meat and has his licences displayed in the shop. He said many butchers did not possess a license to sell organic meat and got away with it by fudging the paperwork used in inspections."

Castle, who has been in the butchery trade for 42 years, said the illegal practice could mean organic butchers are tarnished with the same brush. "The easiest way to close the loophole is for suppliers to ask to see a butcher's processing licence. If he has one, then that's fine, if not then the supplier does not provide them with organic meat. It's as simple as that. It's becoming increasingly worse, but we will continue to highlight the problem."

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