A new study has found sausages sold in grocery stores in several provinces contain meat not declared on the label.
Commissioned by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the research studied 100 sausages collected from grocery stores in Ontario, Quebec and Western Canada.
All were labelled as only containing a single type of meat.
However, after being examined, 14% of the sausages sampled contained meats that weren’t on the label.
In five beef sausage samples, researchers found sheep meat actually made up more than 1% of the sausage.
Four of the beef sausages that contained sheep also had pork, and one contained chicken, the study found.
“How is mutton getting into a significant amount of these products, even in the trace level?” said lead author Robert Hanner, an associate professor at the University of Guelph.
“We don’t know. At least we didn’t find horse meat this time. (That) has personal, religious or cultural implications. ”
Two years ago a similar study found that 20% of tested sausages had been mislabeled as containing a single type of meat.
With files from the Canadian Press.
