Chicken factories accused of relabelling old meat for supermarkets

An investigation has been launched by the Food Standards Agency into claims that three-week-old raw chicken may end up in supermarkets.

An investigation has been launched by the Food Standards Agency into claims that three-week-old raw chicken may end up in supermarkets.

The consumer magazine Which? alleges today that processing plants may relabel their meat several times before it reaches the shops, making use-by dates meaningless.

The main supermarkets say the period from slaughter to use-by date for a raw chicken breast is usually seven to nine days. But in the new issue of Which?, an industry insider has revealed that it could be as many as 20 days.

If a processing plant has surplus chicken one day, it can simply "slap on a new use-by date and send it out the next", Which? claims. The magazine says: "A source within the Meat Hygiene Service, the organisation that inspects meat processing plants, warned us that at least one chicken processing plant in the UK was repackaging and redating raw chicken, passing it off as fresh meat to unsuspecting shops.

"Surprisingly, this practice is legal. The trade union Unison has also warned that redating chicken is common practice in slaughterhouses."

Which? says the initial response of the Food Standards Agency (FSA) was "confused", saying at first that redating was illegal, and then that it was not. The difficulty appears to arise because it is up to producers as to when they set their use-by and best-before dates - although once they are set, retailers are expected to adhere to them strictly.

But Malcolm Coles, the editor of Which?, said the FSA "can't just ignore the issue of chicken processing plants deliberately misleading consumers. It urgently needs to investigate the extent of the problem. The fact that processors can legally get away with redating and relabelling raw chicken several times means that, not only are consumers being misled about freshness, but that unfit meat could find its way into the food chain."

The FSA said its position on the labelling of fresh chicken was clear. A spokesman said: "Manufacturers have a legal duty to produce chicken that is safe to eat. Any producer who extended the use-by date on chicken, so that it was unfit when it reached the consumer, would be liable to prosecution under the Food Safety Act."

Ben Priestley, Unison's national officer, said tougher regulations on poultry slaughterhouse inspections were needed. "There is definitely a danger to public health," he said. "There is an invitation to the more unscrupulous members of the meat industry to try to pull a fast one because the profits made from reselling unfit meat are phenomenal."

Sainsbury's said food safety was a "top priority". "All use-by dates applied to our own brand products are set by Sainsbury's food safety experts to ensure the product is safe and of the best quality. We routinely check the quality and safety of our products and any attempt to abuse the use-by date would be identified immediately. Our checks have shown no evidence of tampering with use-by dates by our suppliers."

¿ One of the UK's biggest poultry producers was fined £4,000 by magistrates yesterday after admitting causing unnecessary suffering to thousands of chickens. Grampian Country Chickens of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, was fined after nearly 2,500 chickens died of heat stress in temperatures approaching 28C last July, while being transported 13 miles from a farm in Long Stratton, Norfolk, to a processing plant in Eye, Suffolk.