Meat

The meat industry faces numerous pressures, including sustainability, transparency, food safety, mislabelling and counterfeiting. There is a wide-ranging difference in produce quality within the industry, typically influenced by animal raising methods that create a price disparity between premium ’boutique’ meat and ‘regular’ meat. The industry is complex and, in many cases, global, which exposes supply chain partners to many risks.

Key issues facing meat supply chains

Counterfeiting premium brands
Premium branded meat is attractive, particularly in overseas markets. Unfortunately, these products are also targeted by fraudsters who want to profit from producers’ efforts at sustainable animal-raising methods or land management.

Mislabelling of origin and quality
Price discrepancies in meat from different countries with different welfare standards strongly incentivise country of origin mislabelling, especially in countries that are net importers.

Undeclared addition of offal
Addition of non-skeletal muscle (e.g., heart and tongue), offal, or blood to ‘bulk out’ products must be declared within a product’s ingredient list according to FSANZ.

Supply chain complexity
The complex global supply chain for meat products makes monitoring and ensuring product authenticity challenging. Fraudulent practices can occur at various stages, from farming to processing and distribution.

Origin verification for the meat industry

We work with producers to identify individual farms to reduce the risk of substituting premium and boutique meat products. Our verification service provides scientific evidence of product origin back to the paddock and farm. It can verify if meat labelled ‘Australian’ is genuine and underpin the integrity of sustainable sourcing claims made at the point of origin.

We can sample physical product at any point in the supply chain to provide assurance of origin claims from production to retail and identify ‘problem areas’ where substitution or mislabelling has occurred.

Explore our Provenance Verification Program