Products such as meat, wine and honey that sell at inflated prices because of their provenance are to be tested in laboratories to prove their place of origin, The Times has been told.

Scientists will announce the move today after they successfully used the new technique, which is known as “food mapping”, to identify mineral water from different regions.

There have been concerns that customers buying luxury products such as Aberdeen Angus beef or fine French wines are fraudulently being sold inferior products from elsewhere.

Paul Brereton, head of food authenticity at the Central Science Laboratory, who was in charge of the water tests, said that they would be used more widely.

“The tests on water have been a success. The technique we used can now be used for all kinds of foods such as meat, fish, cheese and wine, to ensure that products sold as coming from a particular place actually originate from there,” he said.

“It will show the fraudsters that if they try to lie about the origin of their food this test will find them out.”

Food mapping has been developed by the Trace Project, a worldwide network of scientists who have been recording geological and climatic information. The technique is partly funded by the Food Standards Agency.

Scientists have drawn up a database of geological and climatic factors that affect different regions across the world. Using this information, they have constructed mathematical models that can predict the expected levels of natural constituents, such as isotopes and trace elements, in food products from a specific location. A product can then be tested in a laboratory to prove whether the food comes from the specific region.

In the tests carried out on mineral water, scientists predicted the levels of stable isotopes and minerals within Agua de Insalus, a Spanish mineral water. Twenty samples, including two of Insalus and 18 other samples of mineral, filtered and tap water, were then analysed. The results, to be announced at a conference in Crete today, showed that scientists can predict successfully the isotopic make-up of mineral water.

Similar mathematical models for meat and honey are being put together by the Trace Project using £5 million provided by governments, the EU and the food industry. The technique will be regarded as particularly helpful by the honey industry, which has been targeted by fraudsters known as “honey launderers”.

The Food Standards Agency has also raised concerns that South American beef is being sold under premium labels such as Aberdeen Angus.

Many everyday foods labelled as British come from overseas. For instance, Wilt-shire cure ham, and Lincoln-shire or Cumberland pork sausages might sound British but the products could be entirely foreign.

A Lancashire hotpot labelled “produced in the UK” could be made from Uruguayan lamb, and a traditionally British-sounding chicken-ready meal is likely to have been made from meat that has been shipped from Thailand.

Provided that a food is processed – which means smoked, cured, sliced or packaged – in this country, it can carry the label “produced in the UK”.

A study by the Food Standards Agency found that more than half of manufacturers’ branded products failed to give clear – if any – information on where their meat products were from originally.

The Times disclosed this month that customers were being duped into buying farmed sea bass and sea bream that were sold as wild by British retailers.

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