After fish fraud, now meat found mislabelled

Following news earlier this week that Brussels restaurants were serving cheaper fish than what is on the menu, meat producers have now been accused of using misleading labels. The information is based on a study carried out by the European consumer organisation BEUC, of which local consumer rights group Test-Achats is a member.

The tests were carried out in seven countries, including Belgium. Here, the quality of filet américain, was tested, which should by definition contain a minimum of 70% beef. Producers were found to be using names such as préparé or préparé du chef to avoid meeting that standard. Those terms have no legal definition.

The tests also found that added water was not being labelled. Water is often injected into meat to make it weigh more and appear bulkier. A legal obligation to indicate the water content above 5% was being routinely ignored, BEUC found.

Another problem was mechanically recovered meat, where the last scraps of meat are removed from a carcass using high-pressure water jets, the resulting slurry being used in preparation of things like hot dogs and chicken nuggets. The fact that a meat preparation was mechanically recovered was not being indicated, BEUC said, while meat claiming to be lamb or veal often contained a proportion of mechanically recovered poultry.

BEUC called on the European Commission to provide more strict definitions for meat products and preparations for adequate and honest labelling. “At the moment, it’s so easy to defraud the public that they have no reason to stop,” said BEUC’s director.

Photo: Ingimage