What's in Your Meat? Random Other Meat

After the great European horse meat scandal of 2013, the carnivores among us don’t just have to worry about our burgers being laden with antibiotics and stuffed with hyper-processed pink slime. Now, we must fret that those juicy slabs of so-called “beef” might also contain random bits of random other meats—and we’re not talking chunks of Kanye West livening up your salami.

The most recent test results from meat samples in the UK won’t do anything to appease that icky suspicion. A report published by Leicester Trading Standards found that half of the meat products they tested contained the DNA of “undeclared species”—that is, animals that weren’t included on the label.

That might sound like a lot, but it’s in line with what other UK councils have found. That said, it’s not a fifty-fifty chance every time you chow down on a meat dish. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) explained that these councils were targeting their testing programs at foods that were already suspect. The overall failure rate, the FSA told the Guardian, was 13.5 percent.

The report was quick to point out that none of these contained undeclared horse or pork, which were two of the main headline-makers when the issue of meat contamination across Europe came to light last year. In one incident in Leicester, a “lamb” product served in a school was marked as halal but was found to contain pork DNA.

“However, undeclared beef was found in some products and this may be offensive to certain communities in Leicester,” they wrote.

They tested foods from local butchers and takeaways rather than the big chain supermarkets, which have been involved in larger national testing regimes since last year’s horse meat headlines. According to the FSA, “gross contamination” occurs when more than one percent of a product is DNA of an undeclared species. These levels would also potentially suggest the contamination was purposeful.

Bearing that in mind, some of the listings of fail products in the test results are quite a horror show: “Sheep mince contained undeclared chicken (30-60%) and turkey (5-30%),” reads one. “Lamb Samosas contained undeclared beef (60-100%) and chicken (5-30%),” says another. Unsurprisingly to anyone who’s given in to late-night kebab temptation, a number of doner kebabs made the failure list, though in a couple of cases the manufacturer of the product—not the shop selling it—had failed to declare the meat on their labels.

In other cases, it’s either wilful deception, or could be an accident of inadequate cleaning, like a butcher not cleaning his grinding machine properly between mincing different meats, or simple mislabelling. Some of that’s down to ignorance of the laws around food labelling and poor operating practices, but the report stated it wasn’t possible to rule out fraud.

Either way, know that if you’re a meat-eater in the UK, you’ve probably eaten something without realising what it was at some point. While it may seem no biggie to the omnivorously-inclined if their lamb contains a little beef, it’s especially concerning to people who avoid certain foods on religious or cultural grounds.

And the point is that, though it may be perfectly safe to eat all the meats present, consumers have a right to know what’s in the food they buy and choose whether to include it in their diet. Horse, for instance, is happily eaten in some countries but remains rather taboo in the UK, as in the US.

Leicester Council is now calling on the FSA to include more foods in their national testing schemes and to take measures to educate merchants on the rules—like what you’re allowed to call a “doner kebab.” Until then, enjoy lunch.