Genetic Testing Finds Rat and Human DNA in Burgers

In this day and age we tend to be very sensitive in regards to pretty insignificant matters. Sadly, when it comes to matters that are actually important, we tend to either overlook them or to have a huge chunk of the population utterly misinformed. If we cared more about what actually matters, we’d be far better off.

Food, for instance, should definitely be something we really care about. And some people, in fact, do care about what they are eating. The problem is with how the food industry lies about what ingredients and percentages of ingredients they use. It not even necessarily on purpose, it’s just more convenient this way.

According to a new study from Clear Labs, the company which revealed some pretty disturbing things about hot dogs last year, genetic testing finds rat and human DNA in burgers. And while that might seem like the worst news, far more unpleasant things were discovered during the testing.

The laboratory looked at 258 different samples of frozen patties, ground meat, veggie burger products, and fast food burgers from 79 different brands and 22 different retailers. The food was tested for substituted ingredients, toxic fungi and plants, gluten, contamination, missing ingredients, and allergens.

Products were also tested to see whether the amount of nutrients and the ingredients were the same as on the labels. According to the researchers, as many as 23.6 percent of the tested products showed at least some discrepancies between the label and the actual product.

Some of the worst-sounding problems encounters that were not really as bad they sounded were that in two cases meat was found in vegetarian products, that no black beans were found in one black bean burger, and that three products contained rat DNA and one contained human DNA.

Actually, the worst findings were that Yersinia pseudotuberculosis was found in four of the analyzed products (it causes symptoms similar to tuberculosis), as well as five other very dangerous contaminants – Clostridium perfringens, Aeromonas hydrophila, Yersinia enterocolitica, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Escherichia coli.

In terms of nutritional variation, all the samples fared horribly. Almost fifty percent of all products contained more calories or more carbohydrates than listed on the packaging. Still, according to FDA, things are just par for the course. As Clear Labs said in the report:

The low incidence of hygienic issues surfaced by our study is a testament to the burger industry as a whole and the stringent protocols for safe food handling. As noted by the FDA, certain low levels of contamination are acceptable.

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