Burger barons beef up their image in battle against BSE

HOW stands the beefburger? Once the staple item of western fastfood culture, there are indications that it may be threatened by a combination of BSE fallout and jaded palates unless it can reinvent itself.

In France, McDonald's - the world's cost famous fast-food chain - is pinning hopes on a burger gastronomique, injecting more a la France and less upfront best of America. McDonald's in the United States has been cutting prices to boost flagging sales.

In Britain, burger sales plummeted during the height of the BSE crisis. It has been the slowest meat product to show a recovery. Meat is still off many British household menus and a new phenomenon of the late 20th century has emerged, the child vegetarian.

Against such a troubled background, however, the Irish burger is in much better stead. Sales dropped here during the British induced BSE crisis, but have all but recovered, according to a spokesman for Bord Bia, the State's food marketing body.

The industry was blessed by having in place a discernible quality factor before BSE hit and deployed it effectively in the face of the anti meat mood which swept Europe. Because we are primarily meat exporters, plants here are export approved and since 1992 have fulfilled the terms of an EU directive on minced meat which governs what goes into burgers.

This system has meant that Irish burgers were invariably of better quality than many of their British counterparts. The meat used is classified as "plate and flank cuts". Since BSE struck, those cuts are only taken from animals under 30 months. In less regulated times, however, it was not unknown for inferior mechanically removed meat including cheap muscle cuts to be incorporated into burgers.

In Ireland, sales of burgers made from fresh beef have recovered strongly but frozen burgers have been a little slower to rebound, Bord Bia says. Contrast with Britain where Birds Eye decided to launch a campaign in February to stress there was no offal in its burgers.

This was in response to a survey which found that 90 per cent of people believed that beef offal was linked to BSE. Only 36 per cent said they were still buying beef. Better news was that 70 per cent said they would buy it in future if they were assured about quality.

Birds Eye, which considers itself the "most trusted and best known [burger] brand", did not see any need to introduce such a frank campaign in Ireland, where sales are strong. Their burgers on sale here are 100 per cent quality Irish beef, says Mr David Lewis, marketing director of Van den Bergil Foods which promotes the brand in Ireland.

McDonald's performance here also underlines the strength of the Irish burger. It plans to open 20 new restaurants here within three years, a scale of expansion being matched by the Irish fast food chain, Supermac.

McDonald's burgers are "100 per cent Irish beef, using prime cuts". Some 40 quality checks are deployed in production, "but it would be churlish to say that BSE did not affect us. It did initially. There was a move from beef to chicken products, but over the year we recovered," says McDonald's manager for Ireland, Mr Andy Corcoran. McDonald's turnover in the Republic during 1996, the year of BSE, was £51 million, almost 4 per cent up on 1995.

The contrast between Britain and Ireland is also reflected in possible future directions for the burger. Britain is preoccupied with the need to find meat substitutes, the pursuit of the meat free sausage or burger using, for example, wheat or soya. Arrum made from pea and wheat protein is attracting a lot of interest as the brain receives similar feedback when eating it to that when eating meat.

Research in Ireland embraces diversification but retention of the essential meat ingredient, and has focused on making the meat burger healthier. The National Food Centre run by Teagasc has co ordinated an international team which has developed a burger with low fat content but retaining the familiar juiciness. The new burger is predicted to corner much of future markets.