How the sausage is made could be about to change: Meat inspectors fear MPI changes

Wednesday, 27 August 2025

Seared steak, tender lamb chops, rosemary and thyme sausages - that’s what we see at the end of the process, but you might not be aware that there is a job in keeping out the not-so-nice stuff. But that job might be about to change. Anna Whyte and Alka Prasad delve into how the sausage is really made (warning, it’s not pretty).

Animals arrive at meat works in all sorts of states.

Some are sick, dying, or dead. Some arrive off farms contaminated with mud and faecal matter.

It’s a quiet, unsung job that goes on behind the scenes but retired meat inspector of 40 years Keith Gutsell tells The Post it’s an important one.

Gutsell, who retired six years ago, wants to talk about the importance of the job as the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) reviews models for meat inspection and verification.

The sector wants flexibility of inspecting its own meat, overseen by officials. But the Public Service Association is worried that any changes will reduce quality control, and it’s even written to NZ’s biggest meat export markets - China and the US - to warn them.

Meat inspectors are responsible for when animals come off the farm into meat plants to make sure they are fit to be slaughtered, that they are slaughtered humanely and that, further along the processing chain, meat factory workers operate in line with international and domestic rules and requirements.

“Our role was to simply make sure that the meat that did come off the end of the chains was inspected, and that anything that could affect our market - the livelihoods of primary producers, the farmers, the health of consumers in New Zealand, and most importantly, the reputation of New Zealand - was protected,” Gutsell says.

Meat inspection isn’t for the faint of heart.

'Their role would be to cut through the hide and skin and then through the anal canal, and pull out hearts and livers and put them into trays so that meat inspectors could look at each and every facet,“ he said.

Mainly they’re looking for food safety issues.

“Our… rule was just to work on what we saw before us, so we weren't open to any pressures from the meat companies,” says Gutsell.

“If we had to stop the chain for five minutes, 10 minutes, longer - we did. The companies didn't like that, of course.”

One of the most common meat defects was faecal contamination.

“Through processing, butchers are going to accidentally contaminate carcasses, either by cutting the stomach and exposing faecal material, or they come into the yard covered in mud, so when they take the skin off, they're contaminated,” Gutsell says.

“At some plants, chains would stop for a long period of time, because there's just so much faecal contamination.”

Faecal material can be microscopic and so not easily cleaned but Gutsell recalled occasions when under-pressure meat workers “would attempt to wash it off so we couldn't see it”.

Faecal matter isn’t the end of it and Gutsell, pressed on the gory details, elaborates on swollen joints, cysts, and pus and cancers: “All the things that humans get, plus more, animals get.”

The inspectors made sure that if, for example, “a big pus-ey abscess had burst all over the skin of an animal, that it wasn't purely just scraped off, it had to be trimmed off so that all of that contamination was gone”.

NZ Food Safety’s Vincent Arbuckle told The Post MPI was working with industry and AsureQuality to develop “a programme of work to review the inspection and supervision requirements for exported New Zealand meat”.

MPI is investigating ways “that would allow New Zealand to maintain our high standards in a more flexible and efficient way”.

“New Zealand enjoys an excellent reputation for food safety and suitability - this cannot be jeopardised and will not change.”

No specific changes have been proposed yet and the process is expected to take the remainder of the year. Any incoming changes would not come into force until 2026.

About 17% of all slaughter establishments had been performing company inspections for more than a decade “with no food safety incidents”.

Sirma Karapeeva, chief executive of the Meat Industry Association, says the current model “is resource intensive and has not evolved along with other parts of the sector”.

The red meat sector supports an inspection and supervision process that gave meat processors and exporters “responsibility and ownership of their own risks and their own reputation”.

That could still be overseen by government officials with final inspection carried out by a government inspector, says Karapeeva.

“This is a timely opportunity to explore and consider other meat inspection options.”

PSA raising concerns

But the PSA’s national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons says meat inspectors “are very worried about this move towards private meat inspection, they know that the companies are conflicted when it comes to this work”.

“Their job is to be genuinely independent on the chain that involves staring down pressure from meat companies, and that independence is absolutely critical to the high quality meat inspection that we have here.”

Fitzsimons says the PSA has written to both the Chinese and US Ambassadors “to raise our concerns about the move towards private meat inspection, and we've requested a meeting with them”.

It hadn’t had a response.

Agriculture minister Andrew Hoggard said proposals were being developed for consultation.

“I’m confident any potential changes to the meat inspection rules will not impact our relationships with our trading partners.

“If the PSA had bothered to look into this properly, they would have realised that a number of companies have carried out meat inspections for more than a decade with no food safety issues.”

Gutsell says any changes to the independence of meat inspectors, such as bringing them in-house, would be “like having the fox guarding the chicken house”.

He says he has been through similar proposals previously that didn’t stick.

Gutsell describes the current checks and balances as “excellent, and nothing much gets through”.

Gutsell says meat inspectors “are very concerned”.

“Their biggest fear is that they will have no independence if they're forced to work for the big companies, they will do what their bosses tell them to do, or they simply won't have a job.”

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Correction September 9 at 12.20pm: This sentence ‘After the hide and skin is cut, hearts and livers are pulled through the anal canal and put onto trays so that inspectors can look at each and every facet of the offals and inspect the carcasses’, was changed to: 'Their role would be to cut through the hide and skin and then through the anal canal, and pull out hearts and livers and put them into trays so that meat inspectors could look at each and every facet,“ he said.