Lead levels in supermarket game meat – latest results
This winter we bought game meat from supermarkets in the UK and sent the samples to be tested for lead levels by experts at a laboratory. This is the latest in a series of such examinations we have carried out with game shot in the 2020/21, 2021/22 and now 2022/2023 shooting seasons. As usual we […]
Pheasant breasts sold by Lidl contaminated with lead levels up to 85 x higher than legal limit set for non-game meat
Lead-contaminated Pheasant breasts are on sale at Lidl supermarkets across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, new research by Wild Justice has found. We bought 25 samples of frozen Pheasant breasts from seven Lidl stores across Northern Ireland & the Republic of Ireland in February 2023 and had them tested for lead levels using […]
Phasing out toxic lead voluntarily just isn’t working…
Today a study on the use of lead shot in Pheasant shooting has been released – it has some significant (but not necessarily surprising) results. We’re now three years into a five-year pledge completely to phase out lead shot in UK game hunting, made by nine major UK shooting and rural organisations. The Cambridge study […]
NGDA members selling game meat with high lead levels
The National Game Dealers Association claims that its members decided last year not to sell game meat which was shot with lead (toxic) ammunition from July 2022. The wording admits of no ambiguity: ‘At the National Game Dealers Association (NGDA) annual general meeting, members voted to commit to sourcing all feather and fur game as […]
Lead-free promise – we ask the NGDA
We wrote to the National Game Dealers Association over 10 days ago but have not yet had a response to our enquiry: Wild Justice understood that NGDA were going to go lead-free from 1 July 2022 and that game supplied by your members would only have been shot with non-toxic ammunition. Now we are led […]
More high lead levels in Waitrose game meat
The story so far: 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 […]
New research: lead levels in pheasant meat haven’t reduced two years on from voluntary transition to non-toxic shot.
Two years ago a group of shooting organisations, including BASC and the Countryside alliance, announced a five-year, voluntary transition away from using toxic lead shot in the UK. New research, reported yesterday in The Guardian, has shown that to date, this voluntary phase-out has had no measurable effect in reducing the levels of lead in […]
High lead levels in Waitrose and Harrods game meat
Today’s Times carries an account of the results of Wild Justice’s tests of lead levels in supermarket game meat. Last week, we told you about the high levels of lead in Sainsbury’s game meat, now we have the results of similar tests of game meat purchased from Waitrose and Harrods. Both stores are selling game meat with high […]
Lead-contaminated game meat found for sale on Sainsbury’s shelves
British supermarket shelves are still stocked with potentially toxic game meat in the run up to Christmas, recent research by Wild Justice has found. · Tests on packets of pheasant breast and mixed game meat from Sainsbury’s found lead levels at up to 76 times higher than the legal limit set for beef, pork, chicken […]
Waitrose – are you having problems sourcing lead-free game meat?
Wild Justice has been scouring the game meat shelves of supermarkets for shot birds to get analysed for lead content. Last spring, we published analyses of game meat collected from Sainsbury‘s and Waitrose and showed that both stores were selling game meat with high lead levels – the lead comes from fragments of lead shot […]
What you think about lead in game meat
In yesterday’s Wild Justice newsletter we asked our over 40,000 subscribers (you can subscribe for free here https://testblog.samkilday.com/contact/ ) six simple questions about the results that we had published revealing the lead levels in game meat sold by Sainsbury’s. There had been 2773 responses in 24 hours and the results hadn’t changed much at all […]
Waitrose game meat still has lead in it – but signs of improvement
Introduction: Yesterday we described the results of tests for lead levels which we commissioned on Game Mix and Pheasant breasts sold by Sainsbury’s. There are no maximum allowable lead levels set for game meat but there are maximum levels set for other meat such as pork, beef, chicken etc. We showed that Sainsbury’s game meat […]