Biltong Safety - Buying online

Do a search for biltong on the web and you find quite a few sellers, most of them legitimate butchers. If you search on eBay, there are normally 150 sales at any one time.

eBay charges a subscription fee to have a shop (which is what you need to sell more than a few items regularly on eBay) and then they charge insertion fees and final value fees. Plus, PayPal charge for the payment you receive. So the hidden costs are quite high.

The price of beef has risen dramatically over the last few months. This week I spent about £600 more on the same amount of meat than I did 3 months ago. Biltong has a market value of I'd say between £30-£36/kg. I have seen biltong being sold on eBay for less than £20/kg. This can only mean one thing - they do not have the overheads of a butchery, which includes regular product testing, staff, rent, electricity etc., so presumably making biltong from home. How do they store their surplus biltong? Presumably in a freezer? Cross contamination? Moisture reconstitution?

I sent an email to the FSA (Food Standards Agency) which basically serves the same function as the USDA in the US and asked them about people who sell their biltong online and eBay.
This is the reply I received:

"Thank you for your e-mail about online and distance selling.

Food Business Operators (FBOs) who sell their products via distance selling or over the internet would be subject to the same requirements laid down in the Food Hygiene Regulations (Regulations (EC) Nos 852/2004 and 853/2004) as the FBOs who trade from shops. The FBO has an
individual responsibility to ensure the food is safe to eat. All FBOs are subject to be registered and inspected by the Local Authority and approved under 853/2004 is necessary."

This is all well and good, but my question now is: If you aren't registered with the Local Authorities, who monitors and approves you? Surely, if there are concerns regarding biltong, these unregistered 'businesses', and I use that in the loosest term because they probably haven't even registered as a business, should be high on the 'watch' list.

It seems that in this society, if you are honest and make a mistake, or don't get something quite right, you get punished, or are hassled to the extreme. The people who are 'illegal' from the off get away with so much and even then if/when they get caught, they get a slap on the wrist.

I'm all for getting a bargain, but the big word when buying something is VALUE. Just because the price is cheap, doesn't mean you are buying rubbish, but the reciprocal is also true - paying too much for something doesn't mean it's better. Buying biltong from Harrods or Selfridges doesn't mean you are getting better biltong, but you will pay more. If you are buying biltong because of the price tag, please be aware that there is a reason that they are able to sell so cheap.