Would you like some meat with your water?
The Trading Standards Institute highlights an increasing problem in the UK (and it wouldn’t surprise me, if the practice is common in other countries too): Supermarkets are injecting raw pork with water and additives to ensure the water is retained by the meat.
Tesco, who has already been fined for the practice, but only because they didn’t label the meat accordingly, sells such meat for £6.99 a kilo, nearly twice the price of unadulterated meat from an independent butcher. Asda’s pork is only 74% meat, the Co-op and Sainsburys also sell “premium” meat which contains less than 90% meat. The practice has been going on for at least three years, but has not been outlawed by the British government because the meat treated with water and additives is not unsafe for consumption.