Volume 1: Findings and Conclusions
2. Setting the context
The meat industry

144 Meat that had been 'health stamped' as fit for human consumption in the slaughterhouse was sent to butchers or meat processors to convert it into the forms in which it is purchased and eaten (see vol. 13: Industry Processes and Controls). In the post-war period processed meat products had become more popular than fresh carcass meat, and by the early 1990s there were over 700 meat processors in the UK. Some processed meat products contained mechanically recovered meat (MRM). This is residual matter left attached to the bones of carcasses after the cuts of meat have been removed. The bones are then put under high pressure so that what is left can be stripped from them in a slurry. In the early 1980s a major source of bovine MRM was the bovine spinal column.

145 In the fresh meat sector there had been a shift away from high street butchers towards supermarkets as the preferred place to buy meat, and in the 1980s Tesco, Sainsburys and ASDA between them accounted for nearly 50 per cent of retail beef sales in the UK. One reason why supermarkets had become more popular was that they had sought to improve the quality of their meat and meat products. They had done this primarily through the development of quality assurance schemes which provided an audit trail from farm to consumer and assurance about the origin, husbandry and health of the cattle (see vol. 12: Livestock Farming). These schemes had been actively encouraged by the Meat and Livestock Commission (MLC), a non-departmental public body whose role was to promote greater efficiency in the livestock industry.