Britiain’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) has begun an inquiry into 63,000 tons of poultry imported from the Netherlands which contained up to 35% water, the Times reports on Monday.

While it is not illegal to add water to chicken, EU regulations stipulate that consumers must be told if water has been added. The chicken in question was labelled as 80% meat.
David Pickering, spokesman for the British Trading Standards Institute told the Times: ‘If someone is selling chicken with added water as chicken, that is a fraud because people are paying chicken prices for water and a product that does not taste any good. If the Dutch authorities and the EU decide not to take this seriously, we will have to look to do more enforcement in this country.’