Indian takeaways and restaurants including four in Fife are routinely substituting cheaper beef for advertised lamb in their curries, it has been reported.
Professor Hugh Pennington was speaking after a report, published in a Sunday newspaper, said low quality beef was passed off as lamb in one in three curries tested by the Food Standards Agency.
Among those secretly tested were five Fife Indian restaurants and four of the unnamed establishments failed tests carried out.
Professor Pennington said he had been aware of the issue for years, adding it was potentially a bigger scandal than the use of horsemeat.
The Scottish Food Enforcement Liaison Committee, which is part of the FSA, carried out 129 tests in Indian restaurants and takeaways north of the border.
It said cheap beef was passed off as lamb in 46 of those samples. In 33 of those, there was no lamb in the dishes, while the remaining 13 used some lamb and cheap cuts of beef.
The report, which was completed at the end of last year, did not identify the premises which had been surveyed.
It said: “The results from the survey confirm that a significant proportion of lamb-based curries offered for sale in Indian, and similar style, restaurants and takeaways were falsely described as they contained either no lamb, or a mixture of lamb and other meat.”