By Sean Poulter for the Daily Mail
Updated:
Jamie Oliver reveals what he hopes is the unpalatable truth about the 3p sausage
Using a cement mixer and his usual blend of colourful language, Jamie Oliver has revealed what he hopes will be the unpalatable truth about the 3p sausage.
The TV chef recreated the manufacturing process of the frozen products sold in many supermarkets and used by caterers for millions of breakfast fry-ups.
And while putting the meat and many other ingredients together, he complained: 'This actually stinks.'
Oliver condemns the budget bangers in an online preview of his 90-minute programme, Jamie Saves Our Bacon, to be shown on Thursday evening. It can be viewed on the Channel 4 website.
Cheap sausages contain as little as 32 per cent pork, while even this is likely to be poor-quality, fatty and foreign.
By contrast, a British banger worthy of the name should be at least 65-70 per cent pork, including better cuts such as shoulder and belly. Some can be 85 per cent meat.
With cheap sausages, pork fat or lard is added to the mix along with pork rind to raise the claimed meat content.
There is also a co*cktail of chemical preservatives and flavour enhancers.
The TV chef previously demonised the Bernard Matthews Turkey Twizzler, which is made using a similar process and ingredients, during his campaigning Channel 4 series to improve school dinners.
Jamie Oliver has condemned budget bangers in a 90-minute programme, Jamie Saves Our Bacon, to be shown this Thursday
He is hoping that once consumers understand what goes into the cheapest sausages they will switch to better-quality alternatives.
Oliver tells a studio audience: 'There ain't going to be much flavour with that quality of meat.
'At the end of the day you can look at it and say, "We buy these sausages but now I feel bad because it has got all this s***e in them".'
In Thursday's programme he will be turning the spotlight on cruel factory farm conditions used in Europe to produce most of the pork consumed in the UK.
The programme will feature the so-called sow stalls, where pregnant pigs are effectively kept in cages for up to four months at a time without room even to turn.
These stalls are prohibited in Britain, but continue to be used on the Continent where a legal ban will not come into effect until 2013.
Oliver says: 'If you thought battery-chicken cages were bad, then, in my view, I think these little babies are worse.
'In my view, it's pretty inhumane. A pig can stand up, it can sit down, but it can't turn around and it can't scratch itself. And basically they'll eat in one end and s*** out the other, and they've got nothing to do.'
He is backed by the actress Joanna Lumley, who says: 'I think pigs have pretty much a very raw deal. The way we keep them is absolutely ghastly.'
The credit crunch has boosted sales of budget sausages both to shoppers and the catering trade. Richard Cullen, of BPEX, which speaks for the pork industry, said:
'Sausages are a good alternative - they are quick and easy to cook and a fairly cheap way to get protein on the dinner table.'
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