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26 August 2022 – The Department of Agriculture, Land Reform, and Rural Development has published in the Government Gazette, under Section 15 of the Agricultural Product Standards Act 119 of 1990, new standards for raw meat products in South Africa. These raw meat products include minced meat, raw flavoured meat, boerewors, various raw meat sausages, and burger patties.
The new standards include:
- Minced meat:
- Extra lean has a fat content of less than 5%
- Lean has a has a fat content between 5 – 10%
- Regular has a fat content between 10 – 30%
- Burger patties:
- Ground – minimum of 99.6% meat content
- Regular – minimum of 70% meat content. Allowed additives include starch, vinegar, spices and herbs, food additives, and/or water. This class may not contain mechanically recovered* meat, colourants, or vegetable proteins.
- Value – minimum requirement 55% meat content but requires a meat equivalent to reach 60%. This class allows offal and mechanically recovered* meat, as well as colourants and other foodstuffs.
- Economy – minimum requirement of 35% meat content, with a meat equivalent up to 55%. The rest can be filled up with other foodstuffs.
- Any burger patty marketed as coming from a specific species, it must have 70% meat content of which three quarters must be from that species.
*Mechanically recovered meat is a paste-like meat product recovered by forcing pureed or ground raw meats under high pressure through a sieve or similar device to separate bone from edible meat. This product is most commonly found in, for example, sausages and polony.
- The new standards also regulate how meat products are sold with specifications on how the product is packaged, labelled, or displayed.
- Stricter naming guidelines, for example where meat from two or more species are used in a single product, the specific species must be listed in descending order of mass.
- Products containing offal must indicate exactly what offal is used. Failing this, offal must still be part of the product name, for example “Beef and offal patty.”
- Similarly, where flavouring of foodstuffs is added, that ingredient must be part of the name, for example “Chilli Mutton Sausage”.
- Boerewors:
- Must be “manufactured from the meat of a domesticated animal of the bovine, ovine, porcine, or caprine species, or from a mixture of two or more thereof”.
- Must be “contained in an edible casing.”
- Must have a minimum meat content of 90% and a fat content of maximum 30%.
- May not contain mechanically recovered meat or any colourants.
- Cereal or starch, vinegar, spices, herbs or salt, food additives, and water are the only other ingredients allowed.
- Braaiwors:
- Must “be manufactured either from the meat of a single domesticated animal, bird or wild game species, or from a mixture of two or more of such species.”
- Is allowed to contain a minimum meat equivalent of 60% and a minimum total meat content of 40% with a fat content of no more than 30%.
- May contain edible offal, mechanically recovered meat, colourants, vegetable protein, and “other foodstuffs”.
These regulations are now binding.
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