Brace yourself: your favorite burger may be harboring human and rat DNA and facing a range of contamination and quality issues, according to a new report.
California upstart Clear Labs released on Tuesday its extensive food report focusing on hamburgers, using a uniquely devised molecular analysis technique to test 258 meat samples from 79 brands and 22 retailers.
The study found that 13.6 percent of the samples had notable quality issues that were classified into three broad categories: substitution or missing ingredients, contamination, and inaccurate nutritional information.
Rat DNA was discovered in three samples – a fast food burger, vegetarian burger, and ground meat sample – while human DNA was found in a frozen vegetarian burger. The report noted, however, that both DNA traces may be unpleasant but do not pose immediate consumer health risks.
“What many consumers don't know is that some amounts of human and rat DNA may fall within an acceptable regulatory range,” wrote Clear Labs in the food report.
The issues were amplified in vegetarian brands: 23.6 percent of the 89 tested products revealed issues that include trace amounts of beef DNA in two samples as well as 14 missing ingredients. Veggie products could be problematic when it comes to both safety and quality, according to the report.
“We were super surprised by the higher rate of problems in veggie products, because you normally think of veggie products as being safer,” Clear Labs co-founder Mahni Ghorashi told Gizmodo.
He cited the likelihood of veggie burgers to contain DNA snippets from human pathogens, such as 12 samples containing bugs known to lead to gastroenteritis and pneumonia.
Add to the beef-in-veggie-meat case the 16 other products – translating to 6.6 percent of the total samples – that contained pork, chicken, and other ingredients that were not supposed to be present. There was rye grain in two products, too, while one had artichoke.
Pathogens were also a concern. Eleven products or 4.3 percent contained pathogenic DNA, with veggie burgers accounting for four of the tainted samples. While already troubling on their own, pathogens are especially dangerous in veggie products considered to be in the lower-risk food category.
Some of the pathogens detected were E.coli, Clostridium perfringens, and Yersinia enterocolitica. The U.S. economy loses around $7 billion a year to food outbreaks and one in six Americans gets food-poisoned annually, with 3,000 cases proving fatal.
The results, however, could be quite misleading, according to food microbiology professor Michael Doyle from the University of Georgia.
“[T]he method cannot differentiate between live and dead cells,” he said, explaining that cooking will kill most pathogens and this should be accounted for.
Doyle further explained to Genetic Experts Food Service that the pathogens, including the traces of Yersinia enterocolitica detected, are not common concern in foods. As for Clostridium perfringens, one typically needs millions of cells in the food to effect disease.
It may not be time to start worrying about rat DNA, too: Doyle added that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has set regulatory limits for rat pellets in some ingredients like wheat, since it would be impossible to remove all traces of the DNA.
“The caveat again is that the test could be too sensitive and detect levels that are not relevant,” he said.
While useful, the report may need to refine some aspects of its analysis. Clear Labs claims to be led by the best scientists, genomicists, and data science specialists in the country, working together since 2014 in food tests on its proprietary genomic sequencing platform.
Genetic testing has become rapidly cheaper and more dependable. As such, it is paving the way for greater meat industry accountability if only it becomes an industry standard, according to experts.
Photo: Ken Hawkins | Flickr
