Where's the beef... it's in the chicken

SELLING chicken injected with beef and pork proteins to Irish consumers was perfectly legitimate, Dutch authorities insisted last night, so long as the chicken was labelled properly.

The Dutch Commodity Board for Livestock, Meat and Eggs admitted yesterday that poultry exports that arrived in Ireland contained beef or pork protein to make the chicken more palatable.

The Dutch poultry industry responsible for 10% of Ireland's chicken imports said the Irish suggestions of a possible health hazard were a fuss about nothing.

It said the only thing it did wrong was fail to mention the beef or pork proteins on the label of the processed chicken.

EU food legislation also allows for water, containing pork and beef DNA, among a wide variety of other additives, to be pumped into chicken and other processed meats to tenderise it and improve the flavour.

The Consumers Association of Ireland last night criticised the Dutch attitude.

CAI chief executive Dermott Jewell said: "It was a clear abuse of the trust of consumers. They misled consumers into buying a product that contained something other than what it said on the label. The idea was to make somebody rich at the expense of the Irish consumer. It was a manipulated product. That is completely and entirely unacceptable."

However, the Dutch reject having done anything wrong. The added ingredients were legal but were not listed on the label as required, they said. EA Walters, a spokeswoman for the Dutch State poultry board, said: "It was all a mistake over labelling. There was nothing wrong with the products. In Britain they were even suggesting a possible link with BSE through the beef collagen contained in the chicken, but that is complete nonsense."

Bert Hendriks, of the Dutch Food Safety Inspection Service, said: "What happened was misleading but not damaging to health."

Of the 40,000 tonnes of chicken imported into Ireland last year, more than 4,000 tonnes came from Holland.

The Irish Food Safety Authority raised the alarm last month because more than half of tested chicken coming from the Netherlands contained beef and pork DNA, which had not been specified on the labelling.

The FSAI report named brands by Dutch companies Lelie, Vrieskoop, and de Kippenhof as culprits.

An FSAI spokesman said yesterday: "We're pleased to see the Dutch have come out and admitted that these products were mislabelled and hope they will rectify the situation and ensure the products are labelled correctly in the future."

The chicken was found to contain proteins extracted from old animals or parts of animals not normally used for human food such as hide, bones, feathers, skin and ligaments and then injected with water into the chicken.

Adding a cocktail of taste enhancers in binding agents to chicken is normal practice in Holland, which re-exports tons of chicken fillets imports within the EU.

The Dutch poultry industry adds beef or pork proteins to chicken through three methods:

pumping and injecting the flesh;

marinating it in baths;

pressing in additives under high pressure.