A MAN WHO was at the centre of uncovering the horse meat scandal last year has issued a new warning.

It turns out that around a quarter of oregano sold in the United Kingdom and Ireland is fake.

Speaking today on RTÉ’s The Ray D’Arcy Show, Prof Chris Elliott, a food safety expert from Queen’s University in Belfast who chaired a UK-based review into horse meat in beef products, said that the products that a large number of oregano products contain “substantial quantities of other materials”.

This follows tests carried out on products bought online and in stores by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and the British Food Standards Agency.

In total 78 samples were tested from 50 different retailers, with 19 samples found to be contaminated.

The herbs have had a substantial amount of what would should be oregano replaced with things like crushed olive and myrtle leaves.

Speaking on the show, Elliott speculated that there was a possibility that other herbs may have also been affected, with further analysis of the new research expected to show up other fraudulent products.

“Oregano was mentioned specifically. If you do testing and you find that one quarter of all that we are buying has some sort of fraud associated with it, it is unlikely just to be isolated to just that [herb],” he said.

On the potential profit that could be made from the fake oregano trade, Elliott said that a tonne of oregano has the potential value of thousands of euro, meaning replacing a large amount of it with a cheaper or free product is highly lucrative.

Elliott also speculated that the reason counterfeiting had arisen in this area could potentially be the scrutiny that has been applied to the meat sector since the horse-meat scandal last year.

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