THE INDEPENDENT: Muslims and Jews conned into eating meat bulked out with cow and pig products
Cafes and restaurants across Britain have been selling chicken secretly injected with beef and pork waste, The Independent can reveal today.
In a hi-tech fraud run by firms in three EU states, food manufacturers are making bulking agents out of porcine and bovine gristle and bones that help inflate chicken breasts, so that they fetch a higher price.
The swindle was only 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 cafe owners are likely to have been conned into buying chicken containing the powder – which binds water into chicken breasts – while diners have been unwittingly consuming traces of other animals when eating out.
Britain's two million Muslims, Jews and Hindus are forbidden from eating either pork or beef. Muslims would ordinarily eat halal chicken and Jews kosher chicken sold through approved caterers and butchers. >>> By Martin Hickman, Consumer Affairs Correspondent | Thursday, June 04, 2009
