UK food scandal breaches religious line

Cafes and restaurants across Britain have been selling chicken secretly injected with beef and pork waste, a discovery that would undoubtedly upset the two million Muslims, Jews and Hindus there.

 

Food manufacturers are making bulking agents out of swine and cattle gristle and bones that help inflate chicken breasts so that they fetch a higher price.

 

The fraud was detected by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) using new scientific techniques because the non-chicken material had been so highly processed it passed standard DNA tests.

 

Thousands of restaurateurs and café owners are likely to have been conned into buying chicken containing the powder, while diners have been unwittingly consuming traces of other animals when eating out.

 

Muslims and Jews are prohibited from eating pork, while Hindus abstain from beef. Muslims usually consume halal chicken while Jews buy kosher chicken sold through approved caterers and butchers.

 

The Hindu Forum of Britain (HFB) expressed its shock at the news. HFB Secretary General Bharti Tailor said beef consumption is forbidden for Hindus, even unknowingly, because cows are considered to be sacred as they are a representation of the bounty of the gods.

 

The fact that protein powders injected into chickens served in restaurants and cafes contain even traces of beef or pork is horrific, and it will be a mental torture for Hindus as many will feel they have broken their religious code of conduct, Tailor said.

 

The FSA noted that while the use of those proteins does not make chicken products unsafe, it is important that consumers are given accurate information about their food.

 

The fraud has been happening for at least two years, and still continues because of inaction by the authorities in three EU states, believed to be Germany, the Netherlands and Spain.

 

The European Commission rebuffed British demands to ban beef and pork proteins from being added to chicken when first detected in the UK and Ireland in 2001 and 2003. Action was then taken against a Dutch chicken company and authorities thought the problem was over.

 

But complaints resurfaced last year, and the FSA launched a secret investigation to confirm whether chicken, the most popular meat in the UK, was being adulterated again.

 

Manufacturers in Germany and Spain are believed to be making the protein powders, while Dutch firms inject them into chickens sold to UK wholesalers supplying the catering trade.

 

Using a new DNA marker technique, the FSA testing five protein powders from three companies, and all five were found to contain a non-poultry material identified as bovine collagen. Porcine material was also found in two powders, and traces of beef were detected in one of three chicken breasts.