As leading suppliers of the best wholesale meat Western Cape and Johannesburg have to offer, we always strive to provide not only the best quality products but also to keep abreast of all developments in the meat sector. We’re therefore happy to share that earlier this month, as per a report in Business Tech, the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development gazetted new standards in certain raw meat products, most notably guidelines governing what goes into a burger patty, plus how they are packaged, labelled or displayed.

To begin with, the regulations defined four kinds of burger patties: ground, regular, value, and economy.

1. GROUND burger patties are the ‘meatiest’ class, requiring a minimum total meat content of 99.6%, with no other edible offal added ingredients allowed. Any labels of lean or extra lean, need to follow the fat content guidelines detailed below.
2. REGULAR burger patties have to contain at least 70% meat, with no other ingredients added except for cereals or starch, vinegar, spices and herbs, food additives or water. This class is not allowed to have “mechanically recovered” meat, colourants or vegetable proteins to bulk up the product.
3. VALUE burger patties drop the raw meat requirement to a minimum of 55%, but still requires a meat equivalent to boost it up to 60%. This class allows edible offal and mechanically recovered meat to be added in, as well as colourants and other foodstuffs.
4. ECONOMY burger patties drop the raw meat requirement to 35%, with a meat equivalent boost to 55%. The rest can be filled with other foodstuffs.

For clarification, fat content is defined as extra lean meat which has an analysed fat content of less than 5%, lean meat which has a fat content of between 5% and 10%, and regular meat which has a fat content of between 10% and 30%. And for those unfamiliar with ‘mechanically recovered’ meat, it’s a ‘paste-like meat product produced by forcing pureed or ground raw meats under high pressure through a sieve or similar device to separate the bone from the edible meat tissue’ - it’s what is most closely associated with the likes of sausages and polony.

Furthermore, when it comes to labelling raw meat products, the stricter guidelines for naming are that if a meat product contains two or more species, they can no longer simply say “mixed-species” but the specific species has to be listed in descending order of mass. And if a product is a single species but also utilises offal, then that offal needs to be identified as well.

And in case you were wondering, the new rules also apply to boerewors - the regulations stipulate that boerewors must have a minimum total meat content of 90% and a fat content of no more than 30%!

So there you have it, now you will know exactly what’s going into your burger patties and boerewors. And when it’s time to stock up, don’t forget N1’s extensive and high-quality halaal and non-halaal burger range! We’ve been providing the best quality meat Cape Town and Johannesburg have to offer for more than twenty years!