Mislabelling of meat — and the hunting industry is in on it

Wholesalers such as TopCC are making headlines with expired, relabelled meat; Kassensturz speaks of «meat fraud».

Less visible, but just as systematic, is the way the hunting and tourism industry operates: foreign game is dressed up as a supposedly regional speciality using Engadine landscape marketing. Our red deer salsiz from New Zealand was no anomaly, but a symptom.

Fresh scandal in retail

Kassensturz has exposed how a TopCC branch in Muri BE relabelled expired meat and sold it as fresh goods. Labels were stuck over, best-before dates pushed back, a food inspector is raising the alarm, the public prosecutor is investigating. The case adds to a long series of mislabelling of Swiss meat products – from falsely declared countries of origin to misleading «Suisse Garantie» promises.

«Engadine» red deer sausage from New Zealand

A few days ago, Wild beim Wild showed how touristic hunting narratives and Swissness marketing work together: a sausage marketed as «Engadine» red deer salsiz consists of 51 per cent red deer meat from New Zealand. The name and the presentation suggest local hunting tradition and regional origin, but in reality it is global game-meat import with long transport routes and opaque production chains. For consumers it is barely recognisable at first glance that the animal does not come from the Engadine, but was transported halfway around the world before being sold as a «speciality».

Hobby hunting between homeland pathos and imported goods

For years, reports and statistics have shown that a large proportion of the game meat consumed in Switzerland is imported, sometimes up to around 70 per cent, frequently red deer from Austria or New Zealand. At the same time, hobby hunting presents itself as a supplier of “honest” regional products that supposedly go straight from the local forest into the pan. The discrepancy between image and reality is bridged by creative declarations: Engadine names, an Alpine backdrop, hunting romanticism – and behind it all, often imported goods from intensive hunting operations abroad.

Mislabelling as a system, not a one-off

Whether it is expired meat with a new date, “Bündnerfleisch” made from imported meat or “Engadine” game products from overseas: the common denominator is a system in which mislabelling and the obscuring of origin become a business model. Hunting associations and the tourism sector profit from the fact that consumers are willing to pay more for “regional”, “game” and “traditional” products without being able to verify their actual origin. Anyone who wants to speak credibly about animal welfare, transparency and responsibility must apply the same strict standards to game and hobby hunting as to the meat industry.

While slaughterhouses must function almost like operating theatres in terms of their construction and organisation – with dedicated hygiene areas, documented self-monitoring and official meat inspection for every single animal – a knife in the leaves is often all it takes in hobby hunting. Official information sheets do urge that game be gralloched “as quickly as possible”, cooled to below 7 degrees within a short time and kept free of any contamination, but at the same time they warn that the intestine becomes permeable after just 30 to 45 minutes. In hunting practice, with follow-up searches, sloping terrain and transport in the boot of a car, this ideal is far removed from reality – yet the result still ends up in the same sausage cauldron as meat that is strictly controlled industrially, and is sold as a delicacy. Wild beim Wild describes killed game as “essentially carrion” and criticises the fact that it ends up on the plate as food at all only thanks to special exemptions.

What would need to change

The current cases show that existing declaration rules and controls are not sufficient to effectively enforce consumer protection and animal welfare. What would be needed are clearer indications of origin for game products, mandatory information on imports and the hunting context, as well as effective sanctions for deception – including where hunting marketing and tourism work with regional labels. As long as origin, transport routes and hunting practices can be hidden behind pleasant-sounding names, mislabelling remains a calculated part of the business model.