How Can Meat Contamination Errors be Avoided?

The recent discovery of horse and pig DNA in beef burgers from a processing plant in Ireland and the discovery of pig meat in Halal labelled pies provided by a catering company to British prisons highlight the dangers and complexity of traceability systems.

In China, this week, there have been reports that products have been served in restaurants as Kobe beef, when they have come from either imported Australian beef or from domestically produced beef.

The fact that traces of other meats can find their way into further processed meat products shows a failure in the tracking and checking system somewhere along the line.

In general, meat processing plants have now established strict HACCP - hazard analysis and critical control point - systems to ensure that contaminants do not enter the system.

However, most of these systems are set up to ensure that the contaminants are not ones that could cause illness, such as pathogens or pieces of metal or plastic.

The systems are not established to check that the wrong meat is being mixed in the product recipe, when it is not labelled.

Investigation is still continuing into the way these products were contaminated with other meats but there are a number of ways that the error could have occurred.

Cross contamination can appear if the wash down at the end of the run is not thorough and if the same processing lines are used for different meats.

Cross contamination can also occur through human error.

Or cross contamination can also occur through fraud, where people have deliberately used cheaper cuts or different meats in batches to save money.

With regard to Halal products contaminated with pork, if products are officially certified as Halal by Halal inspectors, there could be no chance of cross contamination. Official Halal inspectors do not certify products that come from plants that have pork processing lines.

However, there could be possibilities that products have been contaminated because of unscrupulous corner cutting.

It is when the mix of ingredients in processed products comes from a long and varied supply chain that errors, accidents and even fraud can occur.

The horse meat traces in burgers - and more has been found in frozen product this week - is believed to have been traced back to batches of meat imported from Poland.

It has to be down to the processor and supplier to ensure that the supply chain is solid and that accurate traceable checks are documented to show a verifiable source of product.

It would be impractical and overly expensive to have every batch of every ingredient DNA tested as it arrives at the plant, but more could be done through DNA spot checks by inspectors and food safety authorities in plants.

These incidents in the UK and Ireland will see systems tightened up for a time, but there needs to be agreements in the industry to sift out the unscrupulous suppliers and those who are cutting corners.

And it is also time that the retailers realised that too much pressure on the supply chain can only cause problems and a lack of confidence among consumers - a confidence that will take a long time to restore.