Meat Pies
(Last updated June 2011)
Australians each eat an average of 12 meat pies a year, that’s 270 million pies, while in New Zealand they are even more popular, with the average Kiwi eating 15 meat pies, which is 66 million a year.
So it’s no wonder that at Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) many visitors to our website are seeking information about meat pies.
Much of the interest in meat pies is about how much meat is in a pie and what kind of meat is used.
Standard 2.2.1 in the Food Standards Code governing meat and meat products which stipulates that a meat pie must contain a minimum of 25 per cent of meat flesh.
According to the Standard, meat flesh means:
‘The skeletal muscle of the carcass of any buffalo, camel, cattle, deer, goat, hare, pig, poultry, rabbit or sheep, slaughtered other than in a wild state (i.e. not bush meat), plus any attached animal rind, fat, connective tissue, nerve, blood and blood vessels’.
If a manufacturer adds offal such as tongue roots, liver, spleen or tripe they must declare it on the label. However, because most people don’t like offal in a meat pie the manufacturers very rarely use it.
But what makes up the rest of the pie? Well, most of the rest of the ingredients will be pastry, gravy and vegetable protein but, to ensure everyone knows what’s in your pie, FSANZ requires each pie to have the ingredients listed on the label, which might read something like:
Ingredients: flour, meat, margarine, thickener, vegetable protein, salt, spices, baking powder.