Sausage maker defends 125 percent meat claim

A northern Swedish deli has achieved the seemingly impossible by offering several varieties of sausage that claim to contain up to 125 percent meat.

The manufacturing company has defended its bewildering bangers against customer complaints by saying that their labelling policy follows the country’s legal guidelines.

“To make 100 grammes of sausage, we use 104 grammes of meat,” explained Trangsvikens Chark AB representative Ake Thuresson.

Several specialty sausages are offered by the high class charcuterie, such as Wild Reindeer and Wild Elk; the labels on both products claim to contain 104 percent meat.

According to The Local, one customer was so outraged by the technically impossible pronouncement earlier this year that he filed a complaint with the Swedish Consumer Agency (Konsumentverket).

“Personally I can’t accept that anything contains over 100 percent. And this sausage couldn’t possibly contain more than 100 percent meat as there are other ingredients stated on the label,” the complaint read.

But Thuresson said that the bizarre labelling method is required by law. “If we say there is less than 104 percent meat, we wouldn’t be following established regulations, which require us to use percentages,” he said.

Thuresson went on to explain that Trangsvikens Chark have other varieties of sausage which contained up to 125 percent meat, and that there are many other Swedish sausage-makers who use similar quantities.

“There are other sausages out there that have up to 150 percent meat. Regular sausages often have water added, but these are made by basically putting straight mince meat into the machine, after which it’s dried and smoked, which reduces their weight,” he said.

.However, Swedish Consumer Agency lawyer Gunnar Wikstrom debated the validity of Thuresson’s reasoning. “Mathematics and common sense say that nothing can contain more than 100 percent because 100 percent is everything,” he told Dagens Nyheter newspaper.

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