DNA was searched for in samples of 11 different types of vegetable oil at different stages of the oil refining process. Samples of oil from soybean, rapeseed, maize and flax were taken at different stages of oil production. DNA was extracted and analysis performed by PCR and real‐time PCR with TaqMan probes. Targets with low and high cellular copy numbers were used for PCR. Results showed that it is possible to recover DNA even in refined oil at least for high copy DNA targets. A loss of extracted DNA was also observed in parallel with the advancement of the refining process. High cellular copy number targets gave better results than low cellular copy number targets.