The National Food Crime Unit has published its annual food fraud intelligence assessment, finding that fraudulent and misleading food practices in the UK food service sector are more prevalent than previous estimates suggested. The report, which draws on enforcement activity, supply chain intelligence and tip-offs from within the industry during 2025, identifies three areas of particular concern: fish species substitution, undisclosed country of origin for meat, and false or misleading provenance claims on menus.
The assessment does not claim that the majority of UK food businesses are engaged in deliberate fraud. It distinguishes between intentional misrepresentation — a criminal offence under the Food Safety Act and the Fraud Act — and negligent or supply-chain-led inaccuracies where operators are themselves being misled by their suppliers. The latter, the report notes, is significantly more common but is still a legal and reputational liability for the business serving the food.
Fish Species Substitution
Fish substitution — selling a cheaper or more readily available species under the name of a premium one — remains the most commonly detected form of food fraud in UK food service, consistent with findings in previous years and with international data from jurisdictions including the United States and the European Union.
DNA testing of fish samples collected from restaurants, takeaways and food service operations during 2025 found that approximately 18% of samples tested were not the species stated on the menu. Cod, haddock and sea bass were the species most commonly misrepresented, with substitutes including pollock, pangasius and farmed Mediterranean bream respectively.
The report distinguishes between operators who are knowingly substituting species and those who are being misled by their suppliers. Both situations create legal exposure for the food business. Under the Food Information to Consumers Regulation, menus must accurately describe the food being served. Serving pollock as cod — regardless of where the inaccuracy originated in the supply chain — is a violation of that regulation.
Meat Origin and Provenance Claims
The second area of significant concern relates to country of origin labelling for meat and to provenance claims — "local", "British", "farm-assured" — that appear on menus without supporting documentation.
The NFCU's supply chain intelligence indicates that several UK meat wholesalers are supplying product with origin documentation that does not accurately reflect the animal's country of birth, rearing and slaughter. Operators purchasing meat from these wholesalers may be unknowingly serving product that does not meet the claims they are making on their menus.
The report recommends that food service operators purchasing beef, pork and poultry under provenance claims — British, Red Tractor, free range, organic — obtain and retain documentary evidence from their supplier for each batch purchased. Environmental health officers are increasingly requesting this documentation during inspections, and its absence is likely to be treated as a compliance issue under the revised FHRS guidance published earlier this week.
Menu Claim Regulation
A broader concern raised by the report is the growing use of undefined marketing terms on menus — "artisan", "hand-crafted", "natural", "traditional" — that carry no legal definition and cannot therefore be meaningfully verified or enforced.
While not fraudulent in the legal sense, the use of these terms in contexts where they imply specific production standards creates a misleading impression that the Trading Standards framework is ill-equipped to challenge effectively. The report calls for clearer guidance from the Food Standards Agency on the use of undefined quality descriptors in food service marketing.
What Operators Should Do
The NFCU's guidance for food service operators is practical: know your supply chain, retain documentation for provenance claims, and do not make species or origin representations on your menu that your supplier cannot support with paperwork.
For operators purchasing fish, the most effective protection is a supplier commitment to species verification — either through a supplier's own quality management programme or through DNA spot-testing of deliveries. Several specialist food service suppliers now offer species-verified fish lines with batch-traceable documentation as a standard offering.
The full NFCU report is available on the gov.uk website.