By Keith Perry
The humble Kiwi meat pie is under threat from Australian bureaucrats.
The Canberra-based Australia New Zealand Food Authority says food standards for pies are too old and restrictive and it wants to scrap rules about how much meat must go into a pie.
Animal parts, including the brain, liver, spleen,
pancreas, tongue and tripe, may soon be allowed to pose as meat.
Furious pie-makers here say relaxing the rules will allow inferior Australian pies to flood into the country.
The planned pie revamp would include abolishing the minimum-meat content - 25 per cent in Australia and 70 per cent in New Zealand - and allow previously banned types of offal such as pig's cheek and snout to be used. The only condition is that manufacturers will have to specify the type of offal used.
The measures, which could apply by early next year, would allow more fat in mince and less meat in processed products like pressed ham.
Consumer advocate David Russell is appalled. "Any honest New Zealander who buys a meat pie expects to get a pie with a decent amount of meat in it - not a load of other, cheaper ingredients. The existing regulations ensure people get what they are paying for and now they want to remove them."
Pie manufacturers, who sold about 20 million pies last year, said the new rules would damage sales and consumer confidence.
"Our industry is furious," said Victor Talyancich, director of Ponsonby Pies.
"They are enabling pie-makers to actually lower the standards of pie ingredients.
"Last year the Australians granted us an export permit but said we can't have more than 5 per cent meat in our meat pies. As we have a minimum of 95 per cent quality meat in our pies, we couldn't comply."
An authority spokeswoman, Lydia Buchtmann, said pie manufacturers would still have to use some meat in their pies so as to call their products meat pies. If they did not they risked breaching fair trading laws.
