Horsing around with food labels



And the specials today are...
(credit: mpmedia)

If you listen to the news in the UK, you can't have helped hearing about the "horse burger" scandal. The story is that horse meat was found in frozen beef burgers on sale at a major UK supermarket. There has been a major reaction from the press, but I think the details bear a closer look.

In many parts of Europe, particularly in Italy and the baltics, horse meat is a common food and many locals wouldn't think twice about eating it. As an example, the photo next to this article is of the "daily specials" menu from a restaurant in Verona, Italy. Not only is there a horse meat dish, but do you see that dish with donkey sauce? Yep, that's exactly what you think it is. And this restaurant menu is fairly common.

I didn't go inside the restaurant, by the way.

There are all kinds of cultural traditions and history that cause us to eat some kinds of meat but not others. This changes as you go around the world. If you took those supermarket "beef" burgers to (say) Northern Italy or Slovenia, and labelled them correctly as horse burgers, they'd be snapped up by shoppers.

There have been previous cases of horse meat turning up unannounced in UK food, as in this case from 2003 (opens in new window) where it was found in cooked meats.

The more worrying story today, similar to 2003, is that horse meat found its way into a product labelled as something else, and no-one really knows how or why yet. Many food producers are proud that they can trace the ingredients for their products right back to where they came from. Computerisation and automated machinery make this process automatic. But it seems that someone can still put the wrong label on a box, or tamper with the computer system, and others further along the supply chain won't always check. Of course, we don't know that's what happened with the frozen burgers, but that's where I'd put my money.

A recent TV news report showed that the horse meat came from Romania, and was clearly identifiable as horse meat when it left. It was then traded through at least 3 other companies, each in a different country, and somewhere along the way it was put through a mincer and mixed with beef mince. From that point, even a trained eye might have difficulty spotting something amiss. Horse meat is a fraction of the price of beef, so replacing one with the other could be very profitable.

There are checks that can be done with food. There should be a paper trail from a specific animal all the way to the batch of burgers or lasagnes it ended up in. And with horse meat, we can at least do DNA tests to detect its' presence - although if the paper trail has been messed up, you may still not be able to know how a horse ended up in a beef burger, only that it has.

But none of this matters to the average person until something scandalous happens. We might mutter about not really knowing what's in cheap food, but we buy it anyway. We're conditioned to look at the packaging that food comes in, and the price we have to pay at the till. We're not very good at looking at what's in our food or where it comes from. Even when we do, we probably don't know all the labelling tricks - like the fact that a ready meal labelled "made in UK" can contain meat from Romania. We trust brand names and we trust supermarkets, even though they're often faceless corporations. We don't check what they're doing until something goes wrong. Then we realise that we've actually lost any reliable way of checking for ourselves, and have to rely on government authorities to hold an investigation.

Some supermarkets and manufacturers are better than others. As a slightly different example, a bag of salted peanuts I recently bought was labelled "Made in UK - peanuts from Nicaragua". Another supermarket's peanuts just said "Packed in UK". Both meet legal requirements, and are probably exactly the same peanuts from the same supplier.

A relative of mine has escaped all the meat labelling problems. She buys meat from a local farm shop, where the farmer knows where the meat came from - because either his family or a nearby farmer reared the animals themselves. And the price is roughly the same as the supermarkets because she buys in bulk direct from the farmer (she freezes what she can't use straight away).

What we do know - and the thing to take comfort in - is that horse meat is safe to eat, as evidenced by the tens of thousands (or more probably millions) of people who eat it every day in other countries. But if one good thing comes out of this "crisis" (as some branches of the media call it), I hope that food labelling becomes more honest and transparent.

Legs or breasts?

As someone who doesn't eat much meat (although I'm not a vegetarian), I'm intrigued by some of the issues posed by the farming and meat industries. Things like: if most chicken products are made with chicken breast, what happens to the rest of the meat?

The answer came to me on a recent television programme about cheap food and animal welfare. Some of the chicken thighs and legs make it onto our dinner tables, or in the summer months, onto our barbecues. Some of the other meat from the chicken goes into chicken mince and chicken burgers. But most of it doesn't.

Meanwhile, over in the Far East, cheaper cuts of meat are standard fare in some countries. For example, when I was in Japan a few years ago, I noticed that restaurants had chicken gizzards, cock's combs and chicken skin on the menu. One restaurant had chicken escalopes, but they were made from chicken skin with a thin layer of meat attached. There were no chicken breast products. If you consider that Japan is one of the more wealthy Far Eastern countries, you can see that their choice of chicken meat is a matter of tradition rather than price.

I should tell you that it's not the same in every country; for example, I've had fantastic street food in Malaysia that was made with chicken breast. Things are certainly different between countries.

But I was surprised to learn that we eat so many chicken breasts in Europe that we can't supply them from our own farms. Guess what happens?

Yes, we take the breast from our chicken, and sometimes the thighs and legs. Then we send the rest of the meat and skin off to the Far East. In exchange, they send us the breast meat from their chickens.

Bits of chicken are travelling back and forth all over the world, right now. There is a global trade in chicken parts.

But cheap chicken breast on the dinner table, or in our sandwiches, comes at a cost. The big problem is that animal welfare standards in some Far East countries are far worse than the minimum legal standard in Europe. Apparently, Thailand have been criticised for this, and they are a major exporter of chicken products to the UK. But you won't find this fact mentioned prominently on the packaging.

It can help to check where your chicken comes from; as I mentioned, meat that comes from somewhere in Europe has come from farms that maintain minimum standards of animal welfare. Although some intensive farms are still pretty poor, they could be a lot worse.

The other thing to check is how the chicken was reared. If you buy a Freedom Food chicken, for example, then the chicken is raised to the RSPCA's minimum standards. It may still be intensively farmed (and less than ideal in my opinion), but it gives a balance between animal welfare and the price tag. But if you can afford it (which isn't always possible, I know) then free range or organic chicken is better.

The only problem is that the "higher welfare" products aren't often available as convenience foods. You'll struggle to find free-range chicken burgers in the supermarket, or even organic chicken breast in most local butchers shops. You might have to buy and cook a whole chicken, but this can end up cheaper in the long run if you split up the cuts of meat and freeze them for later use. Not sure how to do that? Google.

I was brought up next door to a mixed dairy and arable farm that diversified into other livestock. I know that things have changed in the farming industry over the years. Not all of the changes have been for the better, in my opinion, and some farmers have been forced to do what they have to, to feed their own families. But the ultimate power to change this is with the consumer.

Shopping local

On a recent visit to Belgium, I noticed something was missing from the outskirts of the towns and cities I visited: large supermarkets. I began to wonder if I'd just not noticed them. After all, if they didn't exist, where did people buy their food?

I eventually saw some smaller supermarkets in the suburbs, but they were a long way from the massive American-style retail parks common to the UK.

All became clear after a visit to a small town centre cafe, where I indulged in a capuccino and some people watching. I noticed that many locals came into town on their bicycles. They bought meat from the local butcher, bread from the local baker, vegetables from the greengrocer, and bumped into friends for a chat along the way. There was a small town centre supermarket, but it didn't have a car park. Again, most customers walked or cycled. There were no massive queues, no big car park traffic jams, and no-one losing their temper.

No, I hadn't fallen asleep and started dreaming. This was real. In some respects, it was like being transported back in time 30 years, to a time when the high street was the centre of retail trade in the UK. But it was also surprising that shopping in this way could still be an easy, stress-free experience - even with today's high-speed lifestyle, and even if you had to go to several shops just to get the basic essentials.

In the process of going into several independent shops on a regular basis, you'd meet several familiar faces. Those shop owners would get to know their customers personally, without needing a computer and a loyalty card to track their regular purchases. In turn, this seems to foster a sense of community. And that's an experience that the out-of-town megastores have difficulty matching.

In the process of demanding low prices and instant availability, I wonder if we've lost something quite important at the heart of our communities.

So shop local - maybe your community needs you!

Image: adapted from Maastricht Shopping Street by Redvers, Public Domain, obtained via http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maastricht-shopping-street.redvers.jpg (yes, I know Maastricht isn't in Belgium, but I am impressed that you're reading this bit at the bottom).

Charity collections - or are they?

We regularly get clothing collection bags pushed through our door. But I've calculated that about 90% of them aren't really charity bags, even if they have a charity logo on them.

Collection bags - can you tell the difference? *
(Image: Howard Lake)

Many of the collection schemes are run by commercial companies. They make a profit on the donated clothes, either by shredding and recycling them, or by selling them overseas in developing countries (yes, I said sell, not give away).

The charity gets a percentage of the takings, and this is usually printed on the bag. Something like £50 per tonne of clothes is not uncommon. Imagine: if the airlines gave you a 1 tonne weight limit for your luggage, how much could you take on holiday? Answer: about 50 suitcases full - and that's a lot of clothes to only be worth £50!

There are some genuine charities who rely on legitimate commercial collections. Times are hard, and it's difficult to find funding, so some charities will enter into partnerships with well-run commercial collectors. £50 is better than nothing, especially if you're a small charity.

I use the following general rules of thumb for telling the genuine charity bags from the commercial collectors' bags:

• Charities will always state their charity number. Commercial collectors will state a registration number as well - although usually in a different place. If it doesn't say the word "charity" next to the number, then you're usually dealing with a business.
• Commercial collectors working on behalf of charities will state how much of the profit they're donating. Usually the statement is not as noticeable as the charity logo or their publicity photos. Look closely.
• Look for the Charity Retail Association logo. This guarantees that the charity gets a fair share, and that no-one else is exploiting your generosity.

In addition, there are some fraudsters operating collections, who are nothing to do with any charity. So in addition to the above:

• Look for a contact address or landline telephone number. Fraudsters won't be keen on giving out details that allow them to be traced. On the other hand, an email address or mobile phone number are easier to hide behind.
• Remember that, on their own, none of the following make an organisation legitimate: photos of sad-looking children, pictures of kittens, pleas to "help the needy", promises to "help create jobs", asking for donations.

These are all just general tips that I use myself, but they're far from perfect. I find the best way around all these problems is to take old stuff straight to the charity shop ourselves. That way, the charity doesn't have to pay someone to collect it, and they'll keep more of the proceeds - up to 50 times more, according to one source.

Incidentally, thanks to the endless supply of "dodgy" collection bags, we haven't needed to buy any bin bags for nearly 2 years. There's always an upside!

* As always, the examples given above are generalisations, and are not intended to portray any particular organisation or person.

(Credit: "Donated goods bags" by Howard Lake, CC-BY licence, obtained via http://www.flickr.com/photos/howardlake/4295620371 )

Designed for the dump

Was your laptop built for this?
Image: Alex E. Proimos

This week, a certain well-known maker of computers and phones has come under criticism for launching a product that is not as environmentally friendly as it could be. According to reports, their new laptop has a battery that isn't removable or replaceable. This might not sound like a big deal, but it does have surprising implications.

The battery is often one of the first things to stop working in a laptop or other gadget. By installing a battery so that no-one can replace it (not even a computer engineer) then you're limiting the life span of the device. Which, cynics would argue, is a great way to lock people into buying the latest gadgets.

Sadly, there are many companies that seem to be doing this. Some people have called this approach "designed for the dump" - in other words, a product is designed so that it becomes useless after a couple of years, can't be repaired, and has to be thrown away.

On the one hand, this doesn't seem great for the environment. On the other hand, it causes people to buy products they wouldn't otherwise buy, and so keeps people in jobs and money in the economy.
Personally, I like shiny gadgets and new technology. But I don't like how quickly it can become unusable when it's still capable of working.

There's an interesting video about the life of electronic gadgets that goes into more detail. It's available below, and also via YouTube.



Image credit: Trash Mountain by Alex E. Proimos, licenced under CC-BY licence, obtained via http://www.flickr.com/photos/proimos/6983485707/

Marketing Uncovered: Price Wars

You've seen the discounts, the sales, and the shops fighting to be the cheapest. Or is it just clever marketing? Let's find out in the latest "Marketing Uncovered" episode!

Here are my top phrases in the shopping category, together with their alternative meanings.

"We guarantee our prices are unbeatable"
This doesn't mean that the prices are the cheapest. You'll often find a host of terms and conditions attached to claims like this. Usually, if you buy the item and then find it cheaper elsewhere, you can get a refund of the extra you paid. But the devil is in the detail - you may have to jump through hoops to get your refund.

"10% off"
And what was the original price? If the company were already more expensive than their competitors, then they still may be more expensive! It's the price you pay at the checkout that counts, not the discount.

"Our customers save £150, on average"
This is designed to lure you away from your current supplier, but again, doesn't guarantee that you'll save money. The key here is that the phrase talks about "our customers", and not the entire population. That's because, with services like insurance and utility companies, no company is cheapest for everyone - it depends on where you live, how much you use, and a whole range of other factors.

"Special offer!"
Why? Is the product a limited edition? Is there a temporary discount? Or is the company trying to offload some outdated products from the back of their warehouse?

A side note
Don't get too sidetracked by prices. A cheap product that doesn't last long can be worse value than a more expensive product that lasts. After-sales service can be important too, and may be worth paying extra for. These are factors that are easily overlooked when comparing prices.

If you've ever wondered why competing companies can seemingly have "cut-throat price wars", while still managing to make a tidy profit at the end of the day, then you might now have an inkling as to how this is done!

(as always, the phrases above are generalisations, and are not intended to reflect any particular company's claims)

The Endless Summer

Fresh vegetables at a street market
Image: Biswarup Ganguly

Everyone knows about the health benefits of fruits and vegetables. But did you know that choosing the wrong ones could have an impact on your wallet, your wellbeing, and the environment?

The phrase "Endless Summer" was coined some years ago, to explain how it's always summer in some part of the world. This makes it possible to have fruit and vegetables on sale all year round, no matter whether they're in season or not. Thanks to an Endless Summer, they are always in season somewhere, and can be transported to store shelves anywhere in the world.

As you'd imagine, the environmental impact can be huge, especially if goods have to be kept refrigerated on the journey. And by the time they reach the store shelves, they're already a few days old and have lost some of their nutrients.

Of course, someone has to pay for the transport costs too. That would be you. Well volunteered!

The way around this? Look for produce that's grown in your home country, or at least close to it. Ideally, try to buy from local producers or farmers markets. If there's a poor harvest (which still happens even in developed countries) the local outlets will still have small amounts of local produce. The supermarkets, however, have to buy in bulk and will often buy abroad instead. The supermarket may be cheaper in this case, but don't forget that there is still a cost to the environment.

Even better than all this is to grow your own vegetables. It's easy (no, really it is), and you can start with a plant pot or grow bag on your patio or balcony.

We might not be able to make the summer last all year, but we can make food choices that have a feel-good factor.

Image: Vegetables by Biswarup Ganguly, CC-BY licence, obtained via Wikimedia Commons.

It's in the bag... already

Reusing shopping bags is something I'm trying to make a habit of.

So, off I go shopping, and actually remember to take some bags along to reuse. I arrive at the checkout, look for my wallet, and when I look back... all my items are in a store carrier bag. The assistant smiles back, happy that they've packed so many things in so little time. Like 10 milliseconds.

I've even had this happen to me when I've already put my empty bags on the counter. It seems that many sales assistants use new bags automatically, especially if they're busy, as it saves time waiting for people to unfold their reusable bags.

In the small stores where I regularly shop, I'm trying to actively point out that I've brought my own bags. Even so, the assistant in one shop refused to listen, and pointed to a tiny hole my carrier bag. She then double-bagged my purchase (two more bags!) to "make sure it all gets home safely". Arggghh!

On the other hand, I sometimes manage to dispense with bags altogether. Like at lunchtime, when I walk off with a sandwich, a drink and a bag of nuts, using nothing more than my bare hands. "Are you sure you don't need a bag?", they say. "You've got a couple of items there". I'm sure the shop staff think I'm some kind of balancing act who has escaped from the circus.

What are your experiences of trying to re-use shopping bags?

(Photo credit: "carrier_bags" adapted from an original by "How can I recycle this", licenced under CC-BY licence; obtained via http://www.flickr.com/photos/recyclethis/167934944/ )