Dobbies has come under fire after it was found to be selling real fur hats that were labelled as 'faux'.

Emma de Loseby, from Edinburgh, complained to her local Dobbies after suspecting the trim of the £5.99 item wasn't synthetic as stated on its label, but the store denied using real fur and continued to sell them.

The 40-year-old informed animal rights activists PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - which obtained one of the hats and ran DNA tests on it proving it contained animal fur, and the company was forced to admit its mistake.

Animal lover Emma, who lives with her husband John and two rescue rabbits, said she knew straight away that the 'faux fur-trimmed' hat at Dobbie's was real when she spotted it in March.

She left the store and wrote to Dobbies, which has stores around the UK, and reported it to the store via email - to which a spokesman replied, denying the fur was real.

It has since transpired that another customer raised this issue with Tesco-owned Dobbies in November, but claim the company also told them they were wrong.

Emma said: "It sickens me to think how many people must have continued to buy these hats believing that the fur was faux, all because Tesco and Dobbies refused to properly look into my complaint."

When presented with the DNA evidence, Tesco agreed to remove the hats from Dobbies shelves, blaming its Chinese supplier for the blunder.

The retail giant claims it 'randomly' checks merchandise in order to avoid these mistakes, but insists that the rest of the hats they recalled and tested themselves did not contain real fur.