UNITED STATES-PORK SOLD AS VEAL.
What if you forked over $27 for a veal dish, that wasn’t veal? The investigators got a tip that this was happening at an East side restaurant.
We visited Verona Italian Restaurant at Broadway and Houghton on three separate occasions and ordered veal dishes to go. On our first visit to the restaurant, the veal parmigiana cost us $27.00 with tax. It’s one of the most expensive items on the menu.
We did the same on our second visit to Verona and ordered veal parmigiana to go. When we returned a third time, we saw that the restaurant had lowered its prices. Now, veal dishes cost $19.00. This time, we ordered veal parmigiana and veal piccata to take out.
After our visits to the restaurant, we took our dishes and carried them over to the Meat Science Lab at the University of Arizona .
We asked a meat expert, Dr. John Marchello, and his staff, to examine and test the meat to see if it was, in fact, pricey veal, or something much less expensive.
Dr. Marchello remarks, "That’s awful light colored for veal. Initially, it looks like pork on me."
The scientists began by handling the meat and even tasting it, trying to determine exactly what it was.
Dr. Marchello adds, "Yeah, that’s fat. That’s pork fat."
But, then, Dr. Marchello put the meat under a microscope and gets a different result. He tells News 4, "Now under magnification, it looks like veal." We ask, "Why is that?" He explains, "You see how transparent that is." Dr. Marchello adds, "We have to do a DNA test on it."
So, the next step is state-of-the-art DNA testing on all four of our meat samples to find out for sure if what we had was veal.
When the DNA tests were completed, Dr. Marchello showed us a chart with the results. He notes, "These curves show for beef. This is our unknown sample." We ask, "That’s what we brought you?" Dr. Marchello says, "Yeah. And, actually there’s two different products here, which, based upon this information, these two are definitely not in a beef item."
The DNA test showed none of our samples was veal. Dr. Marchello adds, "Whatever was in those samples as far as the meat product is concerned, it was not beef, or it was not veal."
The Meat Science Lab did a second, different DNA test on our meat samples, and something interesting came up. Dr. Marchello explains, "In those samples that you brought us, [this] indicates that those four, based upon this gel information, are pork."
All four of our samples tested positive for pork in the second test, matching those dotted lines on the sheet which act as DNA markers for pork.
For most restaurants, pork is much cheaper to buy and serve than veal.
We also sent our meat samples to a specialized lab in Louisiana , but their tests were inconclusive.
So, we took our results and went back to the restaurant to talk with the owner, Mo Moslem.
We ask, "What we were sold from this restaurant was not veal, so we came to find out what’s going on." Mo says, "I can’t go and answer that if you want me. We do have veal here. We do serve veal here. Okay?"
But, the owner claims kitchen staff turnover causes mistakes, like the wrong meat being served. Mo tells us, "We have new people in there. I’m not saying no it didn’t happen, it might have happened because the veal and the pork, it could be the same, I mean, we keep it in the same area."
Before our encounter with the owner was over, he said he’d prove that he had veal in his kitchen. So, he brought out two plates of meat. The first one, he says, is veal. Mo remarks, "See how nice, okay the shadow there, how white, and how nice it is. If you look at this, this is pork. You can tell the difference between veal and pork."
We say, "So, you’re saying this is the veal and that’s the pork." Mo answers, "Yes." We ask, "Would you mind if we took a piece of that to be tested? He says, "Sure, no problem."
We left the restaurant with that new meat sample we were told was veal and headed back to the Meat Science Lab for another DNA test.
But, before we even got to the lab, the owner of the restaurant called us and said he was afraid he’d handed us a sample of pork, by mistake. Sure enough, that piece tested positive as pork. But, Mo Moslem insists that all of this was just an unfortunate coincidence.
