Just in time for Memorial Day, a recently released survey may change the way that you look at hamburgers. “The Hamburger Report” by Clear Labs tested burgers from 79 brands and 22 retailers in northern California and made some discoveries that some may find disturbing.
The lab said that of 258 samples it tested, it found
- 2 cases of meat in vegetarian products
- 1 black bean burger with no black beans
- 3 percent of products contained pathogenic DNA
- 3 cases of rat DNA
- 1 case of human DNA
The rat DNA was found in a fast food burger, a vegetarian burger and a ground meat sample. The human DNA was found in a frozen vegetarian burger, likely from hair, skin or fingernail that was actually mixed during manufacturing, Clear Labs said.
The lab notes that while it may make your stomach turn, the presence of human DNA or rat DNA isn’t likely to be harmful for human health.
“What many consumers don’t know is that some amounts of human and rat DNA may fall within an acceptable regulatory range,” Clear Labs writes.
According to the study, fast food restaurants showed low rates of contamination, but there were “substantial discrepancies between the reported nutritional values on fast food menus and the nutritional values of fast food burger products we observed in our testing.”
Link: http://www.khou.com/news/health/lab-rat-human-dna-found-in-burgers/1