Dear Editor

In a recent article published in the Journal of Food Quality and Hazards Control (1: 15-20), a huge occurrence of zoon-otic species of Sarcocystis was found in hamburger samples from Iran. As indicated in the mentioned article, more than half of Iranian hamburgers (both traditional and industrial ones) were contaminated by S. hominis. This rate of infection in such meat product is surprising and also warning, opening issues on public health emergen-cy. However, there are several questions that should be at-tended, as the evaluation of prevalence of this parasite in native people. It’s well known that investigations on public health concern are fundamental duties of national health authorities of any country. On the other hand, it seems to be necessary to evaluate regional food habits and the associated risk factor in consuming undercooked hamburgers. By the way, training of hamburger consumers to prevent consum-ing undercooked hamburgers is a necessity. It should be noted that since prevalence of some coccidian parasites may be in correlation, there is also likely the risk of infection due to the other coccidian parasites such as Toxoplasma gondii, rekindling the need to increment sur-veys on prevalence of such parasites.