In two cases, meat was found in a vegetarian product and more than a dozen products were missing ingredients that were listed on the packaging, including a black bean burger that contained no beans.
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The lab sampled over 250 food products, including fast-food burgers, ground beef and other products from 79 brands and 22 retailers.
The 258 burger products were analyzed by Clear Labs.
Clear Labs just released a report on more than 250 samples of hamburger meat from almost 80 brands and detected human and rat DNA in some, but experts aren’t anxious because there’s a much bigger problem.
The tested burgers and vegetarian products were selected from retailers and fast-food chains in northern California, according to Fortune. Three of the samples had traces of rat DNA, and one was positive for traces of human DNA. The lab said researchers found several cases of substitutions or unexpected ingredients like meat that was not on a product’s label.
Next time you buy a burger, make sure it has all the mentioned ingredients and not something you are not expecting. You might be unlucky enough to search for missing beans. It appears deception prevails in both the meat and vegetable food manufacturing world. While already troubling on their own, pathogens are especially risky in veggie products considered to be in the lower-risk food category. “When there is a food handler involved you’re likely to find some form of human DNA”, Dr. Michael Doyle, Director of the Center for Food Safety, Department of Food Science & Technology, University of Georgia said in a statement. The human skin appears to have been mixed in there by accident, and not by any devious cannibalistic plan on the part of manufacturers. And, as gross as it sounds, the presence of germs could mean nothing, and they might not have even been alive when the testing on the hamburgers was conducted. What many consumers don’t know is that some amounts of human and rat DNA may fall within an acceptable regulatory range. The good news is that a recent molecular analysis of more than 250 samples of burger products in the United States has found that the vast majority of patties are pretty much what they say they are in terms of ingredients and nutritional analysis, and don’t contain any unsavoury surprises.
According to Clear Labs, it identified problems with substitution, hygiene issues and pathogenic contamination in 13.6 per cent of the 258 burger products it analysed.
In fact, 26.3 percent of the 89 vegetarian burger options tested turned out to have discrepancies compared to their food labels, including nutritional information.
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The startling revelations that a percentage of the burger products people consume contain rat or human DNA, even in the case of veggie burgers, should not necessarily cause consumers to question the relative safety of the burger products they eat.
