In this report, VICTOR AYENI examines the practice of pumping meat with air to increase its weight, and the question this raises regarding consumer trust and public health
In Nigeria, meat, especially beef, holds a prominent place in the cultural, social and culinary space. Whether in homes or public ceremonies, for many Nigerians, a meal without meat feels inadequate.
But a video that went viral earlier in the week left many consumers with a less-than-soothing range of opinions.
The clip showed a meat seller in a Nigerian market who inserted what looked like a narrow tube into raw beef placed on a large table.
In the 29-second-long video, the meat seller could be seen pumping the beef with air and a solution through the injector and turning the meat over.
The caption on the video, which has been viewed by over 36,000 X users as of Thursday morning, read, “How did we really get here? Oh my God, the economy is not really friendly.”
Many social media netizens reacted to the viral video, lamenting what they describe as “deceptive practice” exhibited by butchers to make more profit.
According to them, the sellers charge more for less actual meat because they have been inflated with air, making it look plumper and heavier.
“They pump the meat and use a faulty weight calculator, just because they want to be a billionaire,” an X user, Flacko (@Flacko_VVS) wrote.
“After this, somebody will abuse the government for this crazy act,” another X user, Oke Ayodele, said. “This is not about the economy; this is a pure art of wickedness and dishonesty. Nigerians need to do better.”
A Facebook user, Chintuo Blessing, agreed, “Most meat sellers do this. They pump the tongue, legs and head. When you boil it, it reduces. This is terrible.”
“He will give you meat, and you would think you had a good bargain, only to boil it, and you are wondering what happened inside the pot,” a Facebook user, Elsie Williams, sarcastically wrote.
Butchers, veterinarian differ on practice
However, some butchers, who spoke with Saturday PUNCH, insisted that the practice of pumping air into meat is neither new nor fraudulent.
“It’s not a new thing,” a Lagos-based meat seller, Salami, argued. “ This is what we meat sellers do. It’s not to deceive anybody; it’s just to make the meat easier to separate from the hide. This is common knowledge for those who slaughter cattle or rams for festivities. Ask your Muslim friends, they will tell you.”
Similarly, an Ibadan-based meat seller, Ishola Azeez, remarked that many social media users did not understand what the meat seller in the viral video was doing before they began to make untenable claims.
“People didn’t understand what he was doing. That man wanted to peel off the skin of the cow (called ponmo), and the easiest way to do that is to put air into the meat, so that it will be easy to cut it out from the beef.
“The skin can be sold for leather production. It’s that air pumped in that will make the beef swell so that the fur on the cow skin can be easily scraped off. After this process, we start cutting the meat, and there is no more need to pump air into it,” Azeez explained.
However, a veterinary officer and meat inspector, Dr Ayo Adelaja, described plumping as an age-long tactic that was deployed by meat sellers to cheat customers and had become a ‘norm.’
“It enhances some parts, like the head parts (of the beef) and also inflates it to make it look bigger, just like fruit or produce sellers pad their display buckets.”
The veterinarian agreed that cow heads and legs are commonly inflated with air to make processing easier. However, said pumping of air into the other part would be fraudulent.
“It’s cheating, actually, if it (plumping) is done to other parts aside from the head and legs.”
He also clarified that freshly slaughtered cows or goats are inflated to make removing the fur easier, where the owner does not want to burn off the fur.
“Some consumers prefer ‘party’ meats. These are usually inflated to make it easy to flay the hide on the ceremonial slab, like the one at Bodija Market in Ibadan,” Adelaja told Saturday PUNCH.
Our correspondent saw a typical video of how animals are inflated to remove the fur, which is different from pumping air into meat chunks.
Concerns about food safety
Checks by Saturday PUNCH showed that during the processing of raw meat, brine (water mixed with concentrated salt solution) and air are injected into meat to increase its weight.
Often referred to as “plumping” or “enhanced” meat, the process involves the injection of a liquid solution, sometimes containing air, into the meat to increase its weight and potentially improve its texture and flavour.
The injected air is said to potentially create a more appealing appearance of the meat and help the liquid solution introduced in it to distribute more evenly.
“Uncooked meat and poultry products are often sold by weight. This means that you can inject brine into bone-in and boneless red meat, whole poultry and poultry parts, and fish and fish fillets.
“This will not only enhance their appearance and give consumers better cooking results, but also provide a superior customer experience,” the VerFoodSolutions site explained.
Saturday PUNCH gathered that various types of brine pumps and injectors are commonly used by butchers in different countries to enhance and soften meat.
A Professor of Food Biochemistry and Chair of the Lincoln University Research Committee, Dr Roy Bickerstaffe, noted that gas flushing or gas packing is widely used in the food industry for packaging products to preserve them longer in the modified atmosphere.
“You can use several types of gas mixtures. To preserve a product, you normally replace oxygen that can spoil the product with an inert gas such as nitrogen or carbon dioxide,” he noted.
However, a senior medical officer, Dr Paul Anejodo, explained that gases, while being utilised in the preservation of foods, are also susceptible to contamination.
“Under normal circumstances, air quality is regulated and monitored in an abattoir to eliminate the possibility of meat contamination. Pathogens can be introduced into meat through contaminated water, hands, an unsanitary environment and a contaminated pump tube.
“Aside from that viral video, when you go to any of these meat sellers in the market, and the way flies hover around them and the fact that some of these flies come directly from garbage heap, gutters and faeces, you will want to be careful before anything is used to pump air into your meat without the object being properly sterilised.
“So, there needs to be structures put in place in our markets to ensure that the factors of contamination are reduced. Sanitation and personal hygiene are important. The pump and tube need to be regularly washed, and the process should be hygienically done to safeguard public health,” Anejodo said.
Also speaking with Saturday PUNCH, a Lagos-based food safety expert, Inemesit Ukpong, described the process of pumping meat with air as “food fraud,” adding that the buyer is often misled by the water injected into it.
“The person buying the meat bases it on the weight, but the brine water introduced into it has replaced the portion of the meat which was paid for. Most of this food fraud is economically motivated, because most of the meat sellers want to make money out of it without really giving a priority to the health of the consumer.
“Considering the water available in markets or abattoirs, is the brine water prepared from potable water? What is the source of the water? Does the water have coliforms (bacteria indicative of faecal contamination)? These are the questions we all need to ask.
“Some of this meat, like beef and chickens, comes with their own pathogens, so when you add water that is not potable to process them and even inject them into the meat, it adds an extra layer of risks to the product,” Ukpong stated.
He emphasised that the importance of food safety is aimed at reducing the potential of food health risks, adding that, despite it being used as a preservative, there is no way to confirm the quantity of salt used to prepare the brine water during plumping.
“There is a specific measurement of salt that should be used to make such a preparation, and salt is supposed to be consumed in a minute quantity. There’s a daily limit of salt that a person should consume, so the buyer might not know if they are consuming a high level of salt through these plumpings. Such levels might exceed their daily recommendations and aggravate their health conditions, like high blood pressure.
“Most of these meats sold in the local markets aren’t labelled. Ideally, these meat products should be labelled to indicate the amount of water or salt or other flavours introduced to enhance them. So we just buy them blindly, believing that they are good. But hope is not part of food safety, it’s scientific measures taken to minimise risks to our health.
“There is a need for these food handlers, meat sellers, and butchers to be sensitised to the possible risks. We understand that this is to make their work easier, but at the same time, they need to be transparent and not put public health at risk,” Ukpong added.
When contacted, an official of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission requested that Saturday PUNCHsend an email with the viral video attached.
“Please send us a written email to address your concerns, along with proof of the claim you are making. We verify the video and issue a statement on it on Monday,” the official stated.(Punch)
