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A new study has pointed out some serious flaws in meat labeling in some South African grocery stores.
Researchers working with game meat in South Africa suggested in the journal
Investigative Genetics that
DNA barcodes should be used to help identify even closely related species.
The authors wrote after the study about how the labeling of game meat in South Africa is very poor, with different species being substituted nearly 80 percent the time in food packaging. Game meat in South Africa is a large business, with nearly 10,000 wildlife farms. The meat is considered to be "healthier" than beef because it is both lower in fat and cholesterol, and perceived to be lower in additives.
By using mitochondria COI BNA barcoding and cytb sequencing, researchers analyzed samples of game meat from supermarkets, wholesalers and other outlets, comparing them to known samples and library sequences.
Researchers found that out of the 146 samples taken from these markets, 100 of them had been mislabeled. They reported that all of the beef samples were correctly labeled, but 92 percent of meat labeled kudu was inaccurately labeled.
According to the study, only 24 percent of springbok and ostrich biltong was actually labeled correctly. The rest of the mislabeled meat included horse, impala, hartebeest, wildebeest, waterbok, eland, gemsbok, duiker, giraffe, kangaroo, lamb, or beef.
Comment: Further confirmation, as if we already needed it, that the United States of America is certifiably insane. Between his sense of humor and his basic human intelligence (a vanishingly rare thing these days), Josh will no doubt soon be labelled with Oppositional defiant disorder. Long may he 'suffer' from it, because at this rate, he'll be one of the few to emerge from our collective dystopian nightmare with his mind still intact.
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