Game meat with high lead levels still being sold

7th May 2024 4:22 am

BACKGROUND

Lead is a poison and has been removed from many formerly common uses such as for water pipes and fishing weights, and in petrol and paints. But it is still legal to use lead ammunition to shoot gamebirds such as Pheasant, Red-legged Partridge, Grey Partridge and Red Grouse (amongst others). Maximum lead levels are set for meats such as beef, pork, chicken etc but not, utterly bizarrely, for game meat. The maximum legal lead level for most meats in the UK is 0.1mg of lead per kg of meat, measured as wet weight.

Four years ago in February 2020, nine UK game-shooting organisations made a massive apparent U-turn after years and years and years of defending the use of toxic lead ammunition, and said they wanted to drag the industry into the 21st Century by making a five-year voluntary transition away from using lead ammunition for shooting game birds (ref 1).

To test progress (and in some cases, compliance with trading claims), for the last four years Wild Justice has bought game meat from supermarkets and online stockists and had them tested for lead levels by experts at the Environmental Research Institute, University of the Highlands and Islands, Thurso. See results from samples bought during the 2020/21 game shooting season here (refs 2, 3), 2021/22 season here (refs 4, 5, 6), and 2022/23 season here (refs 7, 8, 9, 10).

So far, partridges sold by Yorkshire game dealer Holme Farmed Venison during the 2022/23 season have been the only product that did not contain any samples with high levels of lead above the maximum legal limit for non-game meat (ref 9).

This winter (2023/24) we bought more game meat samples (including Pheasants, partridges [unknown species] and game mix casseroles comprising venison, Pheasants and partridges) from the following stockists: Holme Farmed Venison (HFV), The Wild Meat Company (WMC), Eat Wild (EW), Marks and Spencer (M&S) and Waitrose. Unusually, Sainsbury’s did not stock any game meat this season.

As in previous years (see methods statement in ref 2) we removed all visible pieces of shot prior to sampling and these were subjected to chemical analysis to determine their metal composition.

Here we report on the results except those from Waitrose – we will tell you about them soon.

RESULTS 2023/24 SEASON

Game meat from all outlets contained some samples with lead levels higher than the maximum legal level allowed for non-game meat (the horizontal line at 0.1mg/kg ww Pb limit) although there was variation both between outlets and between the type of game meat sold.

For example, eight of the ten oven-ready Pheasants and nine of the ten oven-ready partridges sampled from Holme Farmed Venison (HFV), and seven of the ten whole Pheasants sampled from The Wild Meat Company (WMC) contained high levels of lead above the maximum legal level for non-game meat, whereas only one of the ten stuffed partridges and three of the ten stuffed Pheasants sampled from Marks & Spencer contained levels above the maximum legal level for non-game meat.

Holme Farmed Venison

Holme Farmed Venison (HFV) is a Yorkshire-based game dealer that previously supplied game meat to Sainsbury’s. In the 2022/23 shooting season, partridge breasts were the first (and only) samples that we tested that didn’t contain lead levels above the maximum legal level for non-game meat (ref 9).

In the 2023/24 shooting season, we ordered ten oven-ready Pheasants and 20 oven-ready partridges from HFV online but they could only supply us with ten Pheasants and ten partridges. No explanation was provided for failing to fulfil our order. We also bought 10 pork loin steaks from HFV to act as controls.

Both the Pheasants (8/10) and partridges (9/10) contained high levels of lead, above the legal maximum for lead in non-game meat. The median lead level for the 10 Pheasant samples was 0.46 mg/kg ww Pb, 4.6 times the maximum for lead in non-game meat, and the highest level was 1.99 mg/kg ww Pb, just under 20 times the maximum for lead in non-game meat, For the 10 partridges the median lead level was 0.76 mg/kg ww Pb, 7.6 times the maximum for lead in non-game meat, and the highest level was 12.92 mg/kg ww Pb, over 129 times the maximum for lead in non-game meat,

We couldn’t find any health warnings on the HFV website about consuming toxic lead, nor on the game meat packaging. In previous years, HFV has failed to respond to questions we posed about lead levels in the game meat it supplies (ref 11).

There is little evidence to suggest that HFV is actively seeking to source its game meat from shoots that use non-toxic ammunition, which seems to be a backwards step from the previous season.

The Wild Meat Company

The Wild Meat Company (WMC) is an online stockist whose strap line is, ‘Healthy natural meat from the Suffolk countryside direct to your home’ and claims its products are “healthy and delicious” (ref 12). We haven’t previously tested game sold by the WMC but were keen to do so this year due to the company’s shockingly complacent attitude towards protecting its customers from the effects of consuming lead-contaminated game meat. The following quotes are from the WMC website (ref 13):

“[WMC] remain satisfied that our customers should not be concerned about eating game that has been shot with lead”;

“We would like to reassure our customers that our support for a voluntary transition away from lead does not mean that we feel eating properly prepared game shot with lead ammunition poses a risk to human health”;

“The FSA [Food Standards Agency] currently advises that toddlers, children, pregnant women and women trying for a baby should minimise their consumption of lead-shot game. This is because of concerns that children who are growing are more likely to absorb lead than older children and adults. Our own children, of course, have all eaten game from a young age with no ill effects. However, decisions about what to eat or feed your children are, of course, entirely your own, and we leave them up to you!”

We bought ten whole feathered Pheasants from WMC (5 x males, 5 x females). We also bought 10 free range pork chops to act as controls.

7/10 Pheasants contained high levels of lead above the maximum legal level permitted for non-game meat. The median lead level for the 10 Pheasant samples was 0.38 mg/kg ww Pb, 3.8 times the maximum for lead in non-game meat, and the highest level was 1.05 mg/kg ww Pb, just over 10 times the maximum for lead in non-game meat, Unsurprisingly, given the commentary on its website, there is little evidence that The Wild Meat Company is actively sourcing game birds that haven’t been shot with toxic lead ammunition.

Eat Wild

Eat Wild promotes itself as the ‘development board for wild meat’ (ref 14). Previously it was the British Game Alliance, then British Game Assurance, involved in auditing shooting estates for sustainability and good practice but in autumn 2013 that role transferred to a group called Aim to Sustain (ref 15), leaving Eat Wild to focus on the marketing and promotion of game meat.

In November 2023, it was still possible to order game meat directly through the Eat Wild website (however, this is apparently no longer possible and the website now simply points consumers directly to game meat stockists). We have previously sampled game meat from Eat Wild (Pheasant breasts in the 2022/23 season, where 6/13 samples contained high levels of lead, ref 9) so we wanted to test more samples this season.

We ordered 12 x Pheasant breasts and 12 x partridge breasts. However, Eat Wild only sent six Pheasant breasts. When questioned about our missing items, Eat Wild told us there were stock issues and copied Holme Farmed Venison into the correspondence!

We didn’t find any health warnings about consuming lead-contaminated meat on the Eat Wild website or on the packaging.

Three of the six Pheasant breasts contained high levels of lead above the maximum legal limit for non-game meat. The median lead level for the 6 Pheasant samples was 0.10 mg/kg ww Pb, on the maximum for lead in non-game meat, and the highest level was 1.00 mg/kg ww Pb, 10 times the maximum for lead in non-game meat,

Marks and Spencer

Marks and Spencer (M&S) made a bold claim in its 2023 Code of Practice for Game Species Production (ref 16), declaring:

‘M&S only source game that has been shot with non-toxic shot as of 2022, removing lead shot completely from our supply chain’.

We know this wasn’t true for all the Pheasants M&S sold during the 2022/23 shooting season because we tested some and found many still contained lead (ref 9) so we were keen to test again during the 2023/24 shooting season to see whether M&S, despite its trading claims, was still selling game meat contaminated with toxic lead ammunition.

Game meat was only available for a very limited period just before Xmas 2023 and had to be pre-ordered online for collection in store on a handful of dates. We ordered ten stuffed Pheasants and ten stuffed partridges and collected them from the Glossop store on 22 December 2023. Ten chicken breasts were bought in store on the same day to be used as control samples.

We didn’t find any health warnings about consuming lead-contaminated meat on the game meat packaging.

One of the ten stuffed partridges and three of the ten stuffed Pheasants contained lead levels above the maximum legal limit for lead in non-game meat. The median lead level for the 10 Pheasant samples was 0.04 mg/kg ww Pb, below the maximum for lead in non-game meat, and the highest level was 0.50 mg/kg ww Pb, 5 times the maximum for lead in non-game meat, For the 10 partridges the median lead level was undetectable and the highest level was 0.22 mg/kg ww Pb, just over twice the maximum for lead in non-game meat, There is evidence that M&S has tried to move towards lead-free game meat but it is not adhering to its trading statement that it has removed lead shot completely from its supply chain.

DISCUSSION

Despite being four years into its five-year voluntary transition away from lead ammunition, the game-shooting industry still cannot guarantee its game meat does not contain high levels of toxic lead shot. Not one of the outlets from whom we bought game meat samples during the 2023/24 shooting season has been able to provide products that don’t contain lead levels higher than the legal maximum limit for non-game meat. If these products were chicken, pork, lamb or beef their lead contamination levels would render them illegal and unsafe for human consumption. The game shooting industry is getting away with putting public safety at risk simply because the Government has failed to set a maximum legal limit for toxic lead in game meat.

Even the premier supermarket Marks and Spencer who says it has made great efforts to find suppliers who will guarantee non-lead game meat are failing to deliver on that commitment and their customers are having to play Russian roulette each time they purchase game meat from these stores. Marks and Spencer has now sold lead-contaminated game meat for two seasons since claiming to have gone lead-free. Trading Standards may well be interested in pursuing these false declarations.

Why these companies can’t spend a few hundred pounds to test their products prior to selling is a mystery. Instead, it’s been left to a tiny organisation like Wild Justice to do this work.