There's Pork and Human DNA in Your Veggie Dog

There are a lot of mysteries surrounding hot dogs.

Most revolve around how they are made and what exactly goes into the emulsified meat mixture that eventually ends in the bellies of 95 percent of Americans.

And with some 20 billion dogs consumed annually, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, there is no shortage of sausage varieties ranging from kosher, to vegetarian, and everything in between.

With these kinds of production numbers, it's hardly surprising that the ground sausage fillings are not as pure as advertised. While rumors abound of heart, kidney, and other organ meats making their way into the classic meat varieties, or far worse things, it's not likely that the average American is dying to find out what's in their beloved hot dogs and sausages.

But pesky scientists, who have a knack for peeling back the curtain on some of our favourite foods, are at it again. This time genomic technology company Clear Food decided to undertake a massive genetic analysis of 345 different hot dog and sausage products.

In what they call the first consumer guide to food based off of DNA analysis, Clear Food compared DNA data to the labels and was able to narrow down their analysis to two targets. First, "substitutions" which refer to the presence of ingredients in the food which are not on the label and, second, "hygienic issues" related to non-harmful contaminant, usually human DNA.

The results were counterintuitive to say the least. First off, it turns out that two-thirds of the vegetarian wieners tested contained human DNA. Overall, 20 percent of the vegetarian varieties were found to have "hygienic issues," and some of the protein quantities on labels were found to be have been exaggerated by as much as 2.5 times what was actually found in the meat. A whopping 10 percent of vegetarian products were found to contain either pork or chicken meat.

There were also serious problems in the labelling of meat varieties, the most problematic of which was pork because it is prohibited by certain religious and cultural practices.

"Pork is a particularly unwelcome substitution in any food when you consider that significant numbers of people do not eat pork for religious reasons," Clear Foods' researchers wrote, adding that they found pork "substitution" in 3 percent of the 345 hot dogs sampled, including chicken and turkey sausages which claimed to be made only those meats.

But maybe their most interesting finding was that there was absolutely no relationship between price and quality. "Our biggest insight when analyzing the data was that there was no correlation between price and Clear Score," Clear Foods determined.

In order to help consumers deal with this wiener minefield, the team also put together a list of highly accurate products which had no substitutions or hygiene issues, and then compiled a list of retailers who had the best track record for precise labelling.

Pork in chicken sausages, human DNA in veggie wieners, and price not reflecting quality—total chaos. It seems like more we learn about hot dogs, the more their mystery deepens.