Source: Michael Fielding, MEATINGPLACE, 10/27/15


The hot dog industry is taking it on the chin this week. In addition to the explosive report from the World Health Organization that processed meat is carcinogenic to humans, another report claims that human DNA has been found in 2 percent of hot dogs.

Clear Labs, a food analytics company founded in 2013 by software engineers and genomic scientists “to index the world's food supply and set worldwide standards for food integrity,” according to its website.

"Clear Food," the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company’s report, described as an “online food guide for consumers,” highlights the results of tests on 345 hot dogs and sausages from 75 different brands sold at 10 retailers. According to the report, the majority — two-thirds — of the human DNA samples were found in vegetarian hot dogs, not conventional meat hot dogs.

“As we all see when we watch CSI, DNA can be everywhere. It’s easy to leave a human trail behind. Yet, of all the samples tested, only one meat hot dog showed any evidence of human DNA and that was at the cellular level,” the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council said in a statement emailed to Meatingplace. “Experts say that a single cell or two can cause a sample to test positive.”

The report also noted:
• 10 percent of vegetarian products contained meat, and
• there was evidence of chicken (in 10 samples), beef (in 4 samples), turkey (in 3 samples) and lamb (in 2 samples) in products that were not supposed to contain those ingredients.
With the existing USDA “regulatory framework, standards of identity, ingredient approval, label approval and in-plant inspectors, I do not see what value this adds to consumer information,” Andrew Milkowski, professor of meat science and muscle biology at the? University of Wisconsin – Madison, told Meatingplace. He criticized the company for providing what he said was limited information on its methodology.

“An ethical group would provide more information that allows examination of the rigor in their scientific claims. Do they have appropriate laboratory quality procedures with both positive and negative reference samples as controls in their analyses? How do they assure there are no false positives? The computer software algorithm is extremely complex and has it been tested for accuracy?” he said.

The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council agreed.

“It’s notable that the company has said little about its sample collection procedures. It’s entirely possible that the human DNA found could be linked back to the company’s own staff,” according to the statement. “Likewise, when they suggest that some products showed the presence of another species, like chicken in a beef product, this could also be from a single cell and even result from very practice of pulling samples from multiple packages in the same room as the company may have done.

In September, Clear Labs rolled out its first product, Clear View, into private beta. According to its website, Clear View enables food retailers and manufacturers to verify the quality of their foods, optimize their supply chains, choose the best products to buy and sell and track trends and performance of their food over time.

(This story was updated to identify the source of the industry comments as the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, not the North American Meat Institute.)


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