A dash of lung tissue with your camel-snout pie?

SYDNEY - Australia's ubiquitous meat pie, jokingly known as a "rat coffin", is revealing a dirty secret.

A study by the Australian Consumers' Association says some pies failed the minimum requirement that they be 25 per cent meat.

Others met the quota by adding lungs and gristle, taking advantage of the nation's broad definition of meat.

Under Aussie food standards, meat is defined as all or part of the carcass of "buffalo, camel, cattle, deer, goat, hare, pig, poultry, rabbit or sheep, slaughtered other than in a wild state".

"When people see meat, they expect it to come from the flesh of the animal," said Aloysa Hourigan, senior nutritionist at Nutrition Australia. "They will be disturbed that what they see is not what they get."

The survey tested most brands of pies sold either frozen at the shop or hot and ready to eat.

Bits of lung tissue were found in three brands and the three top-selling pies at sporting stadiums had less than 30 per cent meat, the study, found.

The average pie contains 21g of fat, the equivalent of a golf ball-sized lump of lard, the report said.

Australians spend A$1.5 billion ($1.78 billion) a year on savory pastries such as sausage rolls and pasties, and eat an average 12 meat pies each, according to the nation's biggest pie maker, Patties Foods.

"A pie a day can't do anybody any harm," said Richard Rijs, the 53-year-old director of Patties Foods, which makes Four N Twenty Pies, sponsor of the Australian Football League and Australian Rugby League.

"We use the highest quality ingredients we can lay our hands on. Everybody that makes pies to supply the Australian market is reputable."

The study's findings haven't deterred Glen Newland, a 28- year-old tradesman, who on a recent lunch break was enjoying a Tiger - a meat pie topped with mashed potato, mashed green peas and gravy, at Harry's Cafe de Wheels in Sydney.

"I'll only worry if it comes frozen," he said. "I don't buy dodgy pies."

Perched on the harbour's edge near Woolloomooloo's Finger Wharf Harry's is a late-night institution.

Photos of celebrities including Prince Harry, Richard Branson and Lachlan Murdoch wolfing down a pie line the cart's walls, while revellers stop by for a midnight snack.

"We use lean yearling topside beef in big chunks," said owner Michael Hannah. "It's when the pie is minced that you [get] the throwaway bits."

John Ross, founder of the Great Aussie Meat Pie Competition in 1989, is out to restore the pie's reputation.

"Pies couldn't get good publicity with McDonald's and Pizza Hut hanging around," said Ross. "The old meat pie was having a struggle."

Seventeen years on, the competition attracts 1500 pie makers, including Patties and Michel's Patisserie, which has 320 pie and coffee outlets.

The pies are first assessed cold, with points awarded for the evenness of the bake, colour, and the "lift and separation" of the pastry top. The pies are then warmed, smelled and tasted.

"You don't want any fat left on the palate," Ross said.

But the idea of pies filled with entrails is nothing new.

In medieval England, the lord of the manor would give pies made of "umbles," or the heart, liver and other scraps of a deer to servants on the lower tables. The practice gave rise to the expression "to eat humble pie," meaning to be humiliated, according to Webster's New World dictionary.

"The good pie makers wouldn't dream of using that rubbish," Ross said. He has been fighting for five years to have the national food code changed to remove the ambiguity surrounding the definition of meat.

And last year's winner of his competition's gourmet division had no meat in it at all. A vegetarian lasagna pie from Mick's Bakehouse in rural New South Wales state won the title.

Mmmmmm tasty

* Australian pies must contain a minimum of 25 per cent meat.

* The definition of "meat" is, however, slightly vague.

* The tongues and snouts of animals such as buffaloes, camels, goats or hares is deemed acceptable.

* Lung material and gristle are also used to "pad out" the meat content of some Aussie pies.

* The average pie contains 21g of fat, the equivalent of a golf ball-sized lump of lard.

- BLOOMBERG