Old Mother Ashby > wrote in
:

>
> I posted about this a while ago. My butcher says the practice of
> injecting water (salt or plain) into meat is known as "flooding", and
> is very common. He gets his meat from one of the only two abattoirs in
> the state of Victoria that don't do it.
>
> It seems to be standard practice with supermarket bacon - that's what
> causes the milky residue it gives off when you fry it. You are paying
> for the water, of course. The butcher's own bacon may be $20 a kilo,
> but it's all bacon.
>

I've not had a milky residue with the bacon I buy from the supermarket -
not that I buy it very often - maybe it depends on the brand. Lately
I've only bought the Hans lean rindless short cut bacon - no residue at
all. I've never bought meat that seems to be excessively watery either,
and I buy a fair bit of meat at Woolies. Don't buy a lot of pork, though.
Perhaps things are a little different in NSW?

Where it is done, I think the water and/or brine would legally need to be
declared in an ingredients list unless the water makes up less than 5%
ofthe product or unless the name of the product includes reference to the
brining (that's how I read the labelling section of the Food Standards
Code anyway - though there may be loopholes :-( ). There doesn't seem to
be any standard specifically relating to water added to meat although
there is one specifying the maximum water loss permitted from thawed
frozen poultry, which is obviously aimed at preventing producers pumping
up the weight of frozen chooks by injecting with fluid.


--
Rhonda Anderson
Cranebrook, NSW, Australia