The survey said that more than half of ham was mixed with chicken to deceive consumers

Helpless pork price is too high, cheap chicken to "mix and match"

The ham ingredients are a bit messy

Recently, with the deepening of the newspaper's “Healthy Meat Brand Survey” campaign, many consumers have come forward to call in letters saying: “Why is the ham now no longer made from pure pork, but has become a mixed meat product? A lot of attentive consumers have discovered that ham sausages originally made from pork are often doped with chicken ingredients.

More than half of ham was mixed with chicken

Ms. Jinan Cheng reflected that she recently purchased a certain brand of “Black Pork Ham” and discovered that the ingredient list contained chicken. “Look at this brand is pure pork. There is chicken inside the ingredient list. Now pork is expensive, and chicken is cheap. There is a feeling of being deceived.” Recently, many consumers have reported similar situations to this newspaper.

In response, the reporter visited several large supermarkets. In the supermarket ham sausage section, the reporter randomly selected dozens of ham products that did not contain the word “chicken” in their names. The results showed that there were as many as eight kinds of products that had “chicken” in the ingredients and they were not labeled with the specific content of chicken. . Many famous brands such as Shuanghui and Yurun have similar situations. Among them, in the ingredient list of "add calcium" ham, chicken ingredients are written behind the pork. Shuanghui Wang Zhongwang ham sausage, although the name does not mention "pig", but the outer package printed a few naive fat pigs, people suddenly feel is "pork sausage," but can be marked on the ingredients table "pork "Chicken and chicken" are two ingredients. Even the popular "QQ Intestines" has chicken ingredients. Chicken became the protagonist of a mix of ham sausages.

The reporter has roughly sorted out more than 50 kinds of ham sausage products and found that more than half of them have added chicken meat, and most consumers are unaware of this. The reporter interviewed some customers at random and they all believed that the ham was always a kind of pork product and did not know that there were chicken ingredients inside. "If the pork sausage is adulterated with chicken, it should be clearly marked on the packaging, or directly called 'Chicken Intestines'. Otherwise, it would be 'deceived' to consumers."

Chicken is nearly half as cheap as pork

Why are the manufacturers keen to use chicken as wild and blend in all kinds of pork sausages? The reporter has telephoned, Shuanghui and other sales hotline consultation. In response, most brands admit that some chickens have been added to the ham, but this is to improve the taste, "to meet the needs of different consumers."

Relevant industry sources said that the purpose of this move by manufacturers is simple, that is, to save costs. From the second half of last year, the price of pork rose steadily. According to the national system of agricultural and sideline products and agricultural materials price monitoring, by the middle of this year, the growth of pork in more than one country has exceeded 50%. The increase in chicken meat is much smaller.

After investigating the market, the reporter found that despite the recent decline in pork prices, but generally pigs before and after the elbow price must be 11 yuan to 12 yuan per catty up and down, while the brand chicken but the price of chicken but 6-7 yuan per catty. It seems that the use of chicken as raw materials, the cost will certainly decline.

The national standard does not limit "mix and match" chicken meat

So, whether ham can be mixed with chicken in the end, the national standard has no relevant regulations. In response, the reporter learned that in 2007 the state introduced a new standard of "ham sausage." In this standard, there is a clear requirement for product naming: Only the products made from single raw materials such as seafood, chicken or fish can be named as “seafood intestine”, “chicken sausage” and “fish sausage”. In this way, the consumer can judge from the outer packaging of the ham at a glance which kind of raw material or several raw materials the ham sausage is made of.

However, there is no relevant regulation on the proportion of pork and chicken in the ham. Industry insiders believe that the manufacturer has indicated the “chicken meat” ingredient in the ingredient list. Although the word is relatively small, it can also be regarded as “informing”. It is possible to avoid the responsibility and to “play with the ball”.