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Listen to this siteTuesday 30 October 2007
Food Survey Information Sheet 06/07
Meat products, whether prepacked or sold loose, are required to declare how much meat they contain by species, in other words % beef, % pork, etc. The purpose of this survey was to check whether meat product manufacturers are calculating and declaring meat content correctly in response to changes in labelling legislation requirements. The survey also evaluated the suitability of the Agency’s recommended approach to calculating meat content.
Twenty six local authorities collected recipes, samples of raw materials and final products at the point of manufacture on 191 meat products covering sausages, burgers, pies and kebabs from 146 different manufacturers.
The meat ingredients were analysed for fat, total nitrogen and hydroxyproline by a consortium of five public analysts to determine their fat, protein and connective tissue content. A full compositional analysis was carried out on final products, where these had been collected.
The meat content was calculated using three separate methods. Two were recipe based calculations: the FSA method is based on the manufacturer’s visual lean (VL) estimation of meat ingredients by eye and reference to typical values of fat and connective tissue; whereas the CLITRAVI (Liaison Centre for the Meat Processing Industry in Europe) method is based on analytical values of fat and connective tissue in the meat ingredients. The third method (Stubbs and More calculation), which is limited to single species products, is based on analysing the meat product for nitrogen and fat and using agreed nitrogen factors to calculate the meat content.
Despite a requirement for a meat content declaration since 1984, six (3%) out of the 191 product descriptions examined did not give a quantitative meat declaration. A further four products (2%) quantified the meat content, but did not declare it in the correct format.
Overall, the survey indicates that the manufacturers sampled are declaring their meat contents accurately. This was confirmed by comparing the manufacturer’s meat declaration to the meat content determined by the CLITRAVI and Stubbs and More calculations, taking into account the analytical tolerances. Declaring more meat than is actually present misleads consumers, but only 3% (using the CLITRAVI calculation) of the samples and 4% (using the Stubbs & More calculation) overdeclared the amount of meat. If the tolerance is increased to 10%, then only two (1%) products declared more meat than calculated using the CLITRAVI method. In 41% (CLITRAVI) or 40% (Stubbs and More) of the products, the manufacturer’s meat contents were underdeclared compared to the two respective calculations, which could be to the disadvantage to the manufacturer.
The results also showed that the FSA calculation of meat content accords reasonably well with the CLITRAVI calculation, which is the EU recommended method. Nearly 70% of the samples, the FSA calculations were within 5% of the CLITRAVI calculations, and only one sample had a higher meat content by the FSA calculation than by the CLITRAVI calculation. 30% of the samples had a lower meat content by the FSA calculation than the CLITRAVI method, which can be attributed almost totally to underestimating the VL of the meat ingredients.
The Stubbs and More calculation, which is used by UK enforcement laboratories (public analysts), also agreed reasonably well with the CLITRAVI calculation. If a meat product is found to have a lower meat content using the Stubbs and More calculation than that declared by the manufacturer, then this could be regarded by public analysts as an adverse result. In three cases in this survey, the meat content declarations are lower by 10% or more using the Stubbs and More calculation, when this was not the case for the CLITRAVI method. If possible, meat content determination by the CLITRAVI method in-factory is therefore useful if adverse results have been based on the Stubbs and More calculation
In 57% of the products, the VL of the meat ingredients estimated by the manufacturer was at least 10% lower than the VL determined by fat analysis. The accuracy of the FSA calculation could therefore be improved if VL determination by manufacturers also improved. The Agency should investigate ways of helping small businesses achieve this.
Participating local authorities and the manufacturers have been provided with the results of this survey. Cases where there was no declaration or the meat content was overdeclared have been followed up by subsequent visits. The overdeclared meat contents have been subsequently revised. Many manufacturers were already aware that they were underdeclaring the meat content, and preferred to build in a margin of error given the variability of the meat ingredients. In general, the survey has shown that most manufacturers, including small businesses, are well aware of the change in labelling rules and are able to calculate meat contents in response to these changes.
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