First the horse meat scandal, now comes the cheese: Fake goats cheese in supermarkets found to contain sheep milk

An investigation has revealed that fake goats cheese containing sheep milk is being sold in some British supermarkets.

16:30 23 October 2014

Cheese made from sheep’s milk is being sold as goat’s cheese in British supermarkets.

Consumer watchdog Which? tested 76 samples and found that nine contained sheep milk while three contained more than 80per cent sheep’s cheese. Another three contained more than 50per cent sheep’s cheese and the final three around five per cent of sheep’s cheese.

The investigation was prompted by a disproportionately large amount of goat’s cheese on sale in the suspicious wake of a European shortage of goat’s milk.

Professor Chris Elliott, a food safety expert at Queen's University, Belfast, and author of the government's independent review into the food supply network, said: 'We tested the cheese samples for a wide range of different animal species. I had actually expected to detect some adulteration with cow's protein but what we found was substantial amounts of sheep protein in six cases.

'When I looked into why sheep products had been used, the answer seemed to be that there is plenty of this around and the taste to most of us will be very similar and thus 'undetectable' by the consumer.

'In four of the six cases the goat's cheese product was heavily contaminated with sheep protein originating from outside the UK. My message is not that all things foreign are bad, but that when supply chains are long and lack local knowledge and long term relationships there must be more opportunities for cheating and thus more checks are needed.’