It never ceases to amaze me what donors will try to pass off as urine. We recently had a donor supply a sample that the collector (a mom and a pretty good cook) swears was chicken broth. I guess the color is somewhat similar, but the smell gave it away instantly! Perhaps she had gotten away with using chicken broth in the past at some other clinic. We hear quite often from cheaters that they’ve done drug tests for years and have never had a specimen rejected by a collector. They seem dumbfounded when we tell them that we cannot accept what’s in the cup and we discard it.

Even if our chicken broth specimen was accepted and sent to the lab, it would have never been tested. Prior to testing a specimen for drugs, the lab first does what’s called validity testing. They test pH, creatine, specific gravity, color, smell, etc. This is done because of all the cheating that goes on in drug testing. If certain parameters are not consistent with human urine, the lab rejects the specimen and reports the result as substituted or adulterated depending upon the validity test findings. After interviewing the donor, if the Medical Review Officer finds no medical explanation for the results of the validity testing (and they almost never do), they then release the result as a refusal to test.

I sure hope the collectors you’re using know the difference between chicken broth and human urine – I know all the collectors at First Choice Drug Testing do!