Canadian burgers don’t contain horse meat, study finds

Feb 12, 2013

University of Guelph researchers test hamburgers sold in Canada, found they were 100 per cent beef

You can go back to eating your favorite fast food burgers not having to worry whether or not your burger contains horsemeat.

The Canadian public became concerned over the horse meat scandal that’s been playing out in Europe which found that frozen, all-beef products sold across Europe contained undeclared horsemeat in a number of beef products.

Following these reports, the University of Guelph-based Biodiversity Institute of Ontario decided to uncover if popular fast food burgers sold in Canada contained horsemeat as well. Using advanced DNA testing on a wide range of burgers sold in Canada, the results showed that they were all 100 per cent beef.

The six (cooked) burgers that were tested were the following: A&W's Mama Burger, Burger King's Whopper, Dairy Queen's FlameThrower, Harvey's original burger, the McDonald's Big Mac, and Wendy's Bacon Double Cheeseburger.

The DNA testing was also conducted on (frozen) burgers as well from the following: Beef Steakettes (Schneiders), Lick's Homeburgers, M&M Meat Shops Supreme Homestyle Beef Burgers, No Name Beef Burgers (Loblaws), Outlaw Beef Burgers (Schneiders), President's Choice Thick and Juicy Beef Burgers, and Webers Beef Burgers.

In addition to the cooked and frozen burgers that were tested, lean ground beef (in a tube) was also tested which came from Better Beef (Cargill) and Food Basics ground beef as well.

All of the tests showed that the hamburger meat was beef. As a Canadian, you can rest assured that the hamburgers that you are buying are 100 per cent beef with no substitutes or additions.

Video: Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Indoor sheep farming in winter at pre-lambing time requires that, at Ewetopia Farms, we need to clean out the barns and manure in order to keep the sheep pens clean, dry and fresh for the pregnant ewes to stay healthy while indoors in confinement. In today’s vlog, we put fresh bedding into all of the barns and we remove manure from the first groups of ewes due to lamb so that they are all ready for lambs being born in the next few days. Also, in preparation for lambing, we moved one of the sorting chutes to the Coveralls with the replacement ewe lambs. This allows us to do sorting and vaccines more easily with them while the barnyard is snow covered and hard to move sheep safely around in. Additionally, it frees up space for the second groups of pregnant ewes where the chute was initially.