- Food processors have been caught on video boasting that
they have developed undetectable methods of adulterating the chicken that
goes into British hospitals, schools and restaurants with cheap beef waste
and water.
-
- Tests by a television program have also shown that samples
of an own-brand label of chicken nuggets sold by the British supermarket
chain Sainsbury's contain bovine and pork DNA. The company says the bovine
DNA comes from milk protein and the presence of pork DNA in one sample
may be the result of contamination in the laboratory.
-
- Secret filming for BBC TV's Panorama revealed that vast
quantities of frozen chicken coming into Britain each week have been injected
with beef proteins.
-
- Working with The Guardian, the program went undercover
to find the source of the beef proteins. BBC reporters were told by Dutch
manufacturers that beef DNA can now be manipulated in such a way that the
safety authorities' tests cannot detect it.
-
- Adulterated chicken has been imported widely by British
wholesalers. Brakes, a leading supplier to schools, hospitals and restaurants,
has unwittingly imported chicken with beef DNA, laboratory tests for the
BBC found.
-
- On the program, to be shown in Britain today, a German
protein supplier for huge Dutch chicken companies tells undercover reporters
his firm, Prowico, has developed high-tech methods to break down the DNA
of the proteins so much that no government tests can detect the beef.
-
- The proteins are hydrolysed and mixed into additive powders
which are then injected into chicken meat to hold extra water, thus vastly
increasing profits. Tests have found that some chicken fillets are as much
as 50 per cent added water.
-
- The owner of Surplus, the Dutch company that blends the
Prowico proteins into powder, tells undercover reporters the industry has
been extracting hydrolysed beef proteins to inject into chicken and other
meats, including ham, for more than 10 years.
-
- Prowico says the original source of the beef is cow hides
from Brazil. It admits it does not test its beef for BSE, but says Brazil
is BSE-free and that hides do not carry a BSE risk.
-
- However, the British Government's leading BSE adviser,
Professor Roy Anderson, warns that since beef is known to carry disease,
any use of undeclared beef proteins is unacceptable.
-
- The Guardian
-
- Copyright © 2003. The Sydney Morning
Herald
- http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/21/1053196641965.html
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