Investigating the Presence of Contamination in Beef and Chicken from Fast-Food Restaurants, Grocery Stores, and Fine-Dining Restaurants

Abstract

The growing and major issue associated with mislabelling and contamination in the meat industry has resulted in a significant threat to food safety. This lack of transparency in the production of meat and packaging of meat administered to consumers has resulted in negligence and poor food safety practices which has contributed to the sale of contaminated meat to consumers due to sellers having to follow less protocols and thus are able to increase their profits more by deceiving others. Our research centralized on examining beef, and chicken meat samples from a grocery store, a fine-dining restaurant, and a fast-food restaurant. We isolated DNA of nine animal species and then added a multiplex PCR and finally analyzed our PCR
results using gel electrophoresis. By comparing fragment sizes, we determined the authenticity of the samples. Our findings showed that meat from both the fast-food restaurant and grocery store sources showed signs of contamination with goat meat, more specifically for grocery store beef sample #1, beef sample #2, and fast-food beef sample #3, while no contamination was detected from meat obtained from the fine-dining restaurant source. It is also worth mentioning that grocery store beef sample #1 and grocery store beef sample #2 had some chicken contamination. Therefore, our study suggests that fine-dining restaurants have a lower incidence of meat contamination than fast-food restaurants and grocery stores, possibly due to better hygienic practices by employees. It is also worth mentioning that this was a single study with a small sample size.