The NHS has ordered hospitals throughout England to stop using cheap brands of chicken for its patients after a consignment adulterated with water and animal proteins was found in a hospital kitchen.
The chicken fillets, which were, according to the supplier, only 70% meat and had been injected with water and hydrolysed animal proteins to hold the water in, were discovered by chance at Luton and Dunstable hospital.
The meat came from a Dutch processor, Lelie, whose chicken fillets have been found in previous tests to contain undeclared hydrolysed pork and cow proteins when labelled halal, and to have made false declarations about added water. The hospital serves a large Muslim community, which does not eat pork on religious grounds.
The hospital's budget for food is £3.23 per patient per day, which has to cover three meals and all teas and coffees.
An industry source has told the Guardian that thousands of tonnes of the suspect brand have been sold to hospitals elsewhere.
Hydrolysed animal proteins are banned from animal feed because of concerns about BSE, but surprisingly the use of the proteins in meat for human consumption is not illegal if it is fully declared.
A spokesman for Luton and Dunstable hospital said the meat had not been served to patients but had been returned to the wholesaler as soon as it was alerted to the problem by Guardian inquiries. He said that, when the chicken was delivered to the hospital as diced meat, staff did not see any reference to hydrolysed proteins on the label. "We are aware that when we buy frozen chicken that it may contain water. But our normal chicken is British. We are aware of religious sensitivities and we are very concerned that labelling should be accurate."
The wholesaler who supplied the chicken, Dunstable Meats, said: "It's sod's law. We don't usually use chicken from Holland, but we'd run short and bought this. We hadn't heard of any problems with it. The day it went out to the hospital we got a fax from the NHS saying concerns had been raised about these brands," director Jim Craig said.
The authorities have been aware of problems with some Dutch brands for some time. In May the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) published results of a survey of Dutch chicken that found pork and cow proteins had been injected into several samples, including those from Lelie, without being declared.
A general warning was issued by the Food Standards Agency in a letter to wholesalers in England following a Guardian investigation but it did not directly name brands involved, and instead pointed wholesalers to full surveys on the FSAI and FSA websites.
The NHS purchasing and supply agency was sent the same alert by the FSA in August. A spokesperson for the NHS said: "The problem is the guidance that the FSA produced did not specify brands. Without checking individual brands, we wouldn't necessarily know."
She added that the NHS purchasing agency had mailed hospitals listing the brands involved in response to the Guardian's inquiries about them and had now asked them not to use them.
The same brands remain widely available however in the UK.
