The Dutch food safety authority NNWA has made ‘several enforcement visits’ in recent months to Dutch factories where meat is tumbled with water to increase its weight, the Guardian newspaper reported on Saturday.

The aim of the visits was to stop the practice of adding water to imported chicken destined for resale as raw meat, the paper said. The NVWA told the paper chicken produced in this way is illegal.

The paper approached the Dutch body as part of an investigation into the way up to 20% of the weight of some chicken sold in British supermarkets is water.