Man spots doner kebab meat being transported like rolls of carpet in 'sweaty' van

An appalled customer's photo has shone the spotlight on the often mysterious late-night snack

(Mercury Press & Media)

It's the guilty pleasure that most of us have indulged in at least once after a boozy night out.

Stumbling into a brightly lit kebab shop, pointing at the slowly rotating chunk of beige meat, watching as it's sliced onto a pita bread, then topping it with salad and sauce.

We know it's not good for us, and we know it's unlikely to contain the finest cuts of organic meat – but that’s not enough to put some people off.

But one kebab fan in Crawley, West Sussex, says even he was left feeling queasy after spotting at least 13 rolls of meat stacked "like carpets" in the back of a van on a "sweaty" summer's day.

Insurance salesman Daniel Armstrong snapped the silver 4x4's open boot, piled high with the light-pink flesh, on Wednesday.

He said: "My understanding is that they need to be transported in a freezer and obviously that wasn't the case. The men were carrying one each into the back of the restaurant – the only protection they had was gloves.

"They told me it was frozen at the time but I couldn't tell if it was frozen or not. The whole thing is enough to turn your stomach.

(Mercury Press & Media) (Mercury Press & Media)

"The meat definitely would have been sweaty in the heat of the car. It would have been hot in there."

A local restaurant has admitted to transporting the meat in the unconventional manner, but insists the meat was deep frozen and only in the car for a couple of minutes as it was transported from one store to another on the same street.

The local council says "several members" of the public reported the sight to Environmental Health, who are "liaising" with the business concerned.

On social media, the incident led to a focus on the provenance of the meat used in the drunken snack. While kebab meat is typically advertised as lamb, various Trading Standards investigations over the years have found significant amounts of chicken and beef, as well as horse, sheep, goat, and turkey.

Doner meat in a pitta is a classic late-night treat (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

In one study in Ireland, a handful of kebabs contained no lamb meat at all.

The wholesale price of kebab meat is the factor that should set some alarm bells ringing over the quality of the meat, too.

On one trade site checked by The Independent, a 25kg doner kebab was being sold for as little as £41.75 – that’s £1.67 per kilo. The cheapest, high-fat, minced beef at a high street supermarket costs £3.38 per kilo – more than double.

Research by the UK's Food Standards Agency in 2006 found that 18.5% of doner takeaways posed a "significant" threat to public health, and 0.8% posed an "imminent" threat.

But if health issues are a concern, there's a temptation to look at the longevity of the apparent inventor of the doner - Mahmut Aygun, who lived to the age of 87.

It is claimed that Mr Aygun invented the meat processing technique almost 50 years ago, to feed Berlin's migrant food workers.