Beef has a worthy reputation for being ‘high in iron’, but not always for the right reasons.

While such detections are relatively uncommon, X-ray scanners installed in many export meatworks across the country continue to pick-up product contaminated with fragments of metal, in a wide variety of forms.

There is no suggestion that Australian beef is any worse for metal fragment contamination than beef produced anywhere else in the world, but the fact that it still occasionally occurs is of concern.

Demonstrating the need for constant vigil over the potential threat of metal contamination, in a worst-case scenario, metal contamination in a consignment of beef can lead to an export plant, or indeed an entire exporting country, being de-listed for supply. New Zealand suffered such a de-listing by Korea some years ago.

A carton detection made at point of entry can in some cases lead to an entire shipping container being rejected by the importer.

While metal-detecting X-ray equipment is not mandatory in Australian export beef plants, most use the equipment as part of ‘good marketing and product integrity practise,’ the Australian Meat Industry Council said yesterday.

“Detections these days are far fewer than they once were, but they still occur. But it’s a little like an E.coli contamination – it only takes one incident to create a media storm in a customer country,” AMIC’s national director of processing, Steve Martyn said.

“People think that a piece of metal in a beast would be easy to find, but if it’s a tiny fragment of buckshot stuck in the butt somewhere, it can be very difficult to detect,” he said.

Latest generation X-ray equipment was far more sensitive than what was used previously, and customer countries like Korea and Japan that had heightened sensitivity to metal contamination had driven processor investment in such equipment, Mr Martyn said.    

Buckshot key offender

The overwhelming source of contamination in beef detections made in Australia is in buckshot from shotguns, AMIC says.

Irresponsible ‘recreational’ shooters in country areas – either on a property legally or as trespassers – are widely regarded as the most significant source of shotgun pellet contamination.

Rightly or wrongly, the rise in use of helicopter mustering has also been fingered as a potential source, with shotguns in the hands of unscrupulous operators seen as a tool to dislodge hard-to-shift cattle out of timber.

During its current three-week annual maintenance closure, latest X-ray scanning systems have been installed at the Borthwicks Mackay plant, owned and operated by Nippon Meat Packers Australia.

Company spokesman Stephen Kelly said the new installation was not specifically linked to any rise in recent metal detections, but more to the fact that importing countries inevitably had the most sophisticated metal detection technology available.

“We need to keep pace at plant level with the technology improvements in customer countries. Not a carton of beef leaves the factory now without first passing through the X-ray equipment,” he said.

“Not only our major customers, but entire importing countries want to make sure that a sufficient level of intervention is carried out to try to make sure that no foreign material slips through the net.”

Mr Kelly said there were far fewer cases of metal contamination now than what had been seen years ago. Historically, the problem was more prevalent in the northern parts of Australia because of aerial mustering and the old BTEC disease eradication scheme.  

“Shotguns as a tool in helicopter mustering has long disappeared, but there are still occasions where buckshot contamination happens – often without the knowledge of the owner of the cattle,” he said.   

Borthwicks Mackay livestock buyer Malcolm Kinman said there was no suggestion that beef producers themselves were responsible. It tended to be other people on properties – often, probably without permission – with firearms.  

The problem was not limited only to beef produced in higher-density beef producing areas along the coast, however, with detections occasionally made in cattle from much further west.

Major grinders producing burger patties for major end-users like McDonalds and Burger King not only scan carton-meat on arrival, but also a second time when at the formed frozen pattie stage.      

Odd collection of metal

Going back 20 years or more, this writer once had the chance to view a ‘collection’ of metal foreign objects found in beef – fortunately picked up before the product left these shores.

The samples, carefully pasted into an album by AMH Livestock manager John Keir, included not only shotgun pellets and rifle projectiles, but a bewildering assortment of metal objects including arrow-heads, nails and other building materials, shards of galvanised iron, barbed-wire offcuts, hypodermic syringes and most curious of all, an ancient gramophone record-player needle.

Some had obviously entered the animals through misadventure, such as around a station tip, but others, like the shotgun pellets, obviously required human input.

The whole issue of metal contamination highlights the need for constant vigilance at the farm level, where the overwhelming majority of the contamination occurs. Inspection of yards, races, stock crates and other cattle handling areas for loose and protruding metal objects is a good start, Cattle Council of Australia says. Awareness of strangers on properties may also lower risk  of buckshot contamination.

• See this morning's companion story, "2011 floods may have contributed to spike in metal contamination."