UK: Pork found in halal chicken burgers

Pork has been discovered in Halal chicken burgers which were distributed by a Birmingham food company.

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As part of an investigation into contaminated meat products the city council’s environmental health team has discovered pork extracts in a Halal meat product.

The pork extracts were found while checking for adulteration with horsemeat or other non-specified meat species.

The council is awaiting the full set of results but has been notified by the laboratory that provisional results on the Halal product below are that it has been found to contain pork protein.

The product is:
Humza Brand Chicken Burgers in pack of 20 with a best before date of 10th May 2013

If consumers have any of this product at home they should return it/them to the shop that they bought it from or dispose of the product.

The city council would like to stress that at this stage, there is no evidence to suggest that Roshan Foods – who distributed the products – has caused this deliberately.

Investigations are on-going and the Birmingham company involved is co-operating fully.  Their retail and catering customers have been notified and a product recall instigated.  We are working closely with officers from other local authorities to trace exactly where and how this has occurred.

Further sampling on these and other products produced by the company has been carried out and the results should be known by the end of next week. The Food Standards Agency has been advised of the situation.

Cllr Barbara Dring, Chair of the Licensing and Public Protection Committee, said: “We are very concerned about these test results and their implication for consumers, we are taking decisive action to remove these products from sale and will continue our investigations into contaminated meat products.”

To date the city council’s environmental health team has taken over 170 samples of products produced or sold in Birmingham and submitted them for testing.