EU diktat on meat could spell the end of the cheap burger

THE price of burgers, sausages and pies is to rocket because of an EU ban on low-quality meat.

From the end of this month, there will be a ban on bulking up fast food and supermarket value ranges with reconstituted mince made from scraps of beef and lamb.

The move will hit the shopping budget of already hard-pressed families and lead to more meat being wasted in abattoirs.

The Food Standards Agency, which risked a ban on the export of British meat products if it did not impose the Brussels-driven ruling, stressed that the change is not being made because of health or safety issues.

Instead, it is the result of a disagreement over the definition of the so-called ‘desinewed meat’.

But the meat-processing industry accused the FSA of ‘bowing down’ to the European Commission and warned of price rises and job losses.

Stephen Rossides, director of the British Meat Processors Association, said: ‘This is a criminal waste of a valuable food product at a time when we are being urged to reduce food wastage. Common sense has gone out of the window.

‘If economic principles apply, the cost of the burger will rise and it is going to be the less well- off who are affected at what is already a bad time.’

The row surrounds desinewed meat, or DSM.

This is meat that is left on bones and carcasses after slaughter. Rather than going to waste, it is grated off mechanically, creating a mince-like substance.

Jamie Oliver’s high-profile campaign for junk food to be banned from school canteens means DSM features less in school dinners than in the past.

But it is widely found in inexpensive meat products on sale in fast food restaurants and in supermarkets, where it is used to bulk up the meat content at low cost. The FSA sees DSM as being a different product to a second type of reconstituted meat, called mechanically separated meat, or MSM.

The higher pressures used in the MSM process means that while it is considered acceptable for chicken and pork, it is not deemed usable for beef and lamb, for fear of spreading diseases such as BSE.

However, the European Commis-

‘This happened at breakneck speed’

sion says DSM and MSM are one and the same.

Under this interpretation of the law, it will no longer be possible to put beef or lamb through even the gentler DSM processing.

Existing products will not be recalled but any foods that contain reconstituted beef or lamb will have to be reformulated.

The cheap desinewed meat in will have to be replaced with more expensive cuts.

Chicken and pork carcasses can still undergo DSM processing but any foods they are put into will have to be clearly labelled.

Currently, DSM’S classification as meat means it counts towards the total meat content of a product and does not need to be listed separately on the label.

There are fears that the changes will push up the cost of some meat products so much that shoppers stop buying them, leading to job losses in Britain’s £6billion meat industry.

The British Meat Processors Association estimates that the total cost to the consumer and industry of the moratorium could reach £200million.

Describing the ban as ‘madness’, Mr Rossides said: ‘All this has happened at breakneck speed. The industry must be given time to adjust to any change in requirements and market circumstances in a controlled and properly managed way, in order to minimise market disruption and financial damage.

‘People are going to have to reformulate products, repackage and relabel. I don’t know that you won’t see an English sausage any more but it may be that it’s more expensive.’

The FSA said that if the dispute over classification can be resolved, the ban could be lifted. Its chief executive, Tim Smith, said the move had come ‘unexpectedly’.

The Food and Drink Federation said it supports ‘ a pragmatic approach to the required changes, including a reasonable timeframe for the transition, to avoid disproportionate measures that could lead to meat being wasted, causing a significant impact on the environment and on the price and availability of meat raw material’.

A spokesman for the consumer watchdog Which? said that its research showed that shoppers want to know if they are eating desinewed meat and that clear labelling of food allows customers to make an informed choice.