Species determination – Can we detect and quantify meat adulteration?

• Published in: Meat science Vol. 83; no. 2; pp. 165 - 174
• Main Authors: Ballin, Nicolai Z., Vogensen, Finn K., Karlsson, Anders H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01.10.2009; [Amsterdam]: Elsevier Science; Elsevier
• Subjects: adulterated products; Adulteration; Authentication; Biological and medical sciences; detection; food analysis; food composition; Food industries; food labeling; Fraud; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Meat; Meat and meat product industries; Meat products; polymerase chain reaction; product authenticity; Real time PCR; Speciation; Species determination; Authentication; Fraud; Real time PCR; Species determination; Adulteration; Meat products; Speciation; Meat; Meat product; Quantitative analysis
• ISSN: 0309-1740; 1873-4138
• DOI: 10.1016/j.meatsci.2009.06.003

Proper labelling of meat products is important to help fair-trade, and to enable consumers to make informed choices. However, it has been shown that labelling of species, expressed as weight/weight (w/w), on meat product labels was incorrect in more than 20% of cases. Enforcement of labelling regulations requires reliable analytical methods. Analytical methods are often based on protein or DNA measurements, which are not directly comparable to labelled meat expressed as w/w. This review discusses a wide range of analytical methods with focus on their ability to quantify and their limits of detection (LOD). In particular, problems associated with a correlation from quantitative DNA based results to meat content (w/w) are discussed. The hope is to make researchers aware of the problems of expressing DNA results as meat content (w/w) in order to find better alternatives. One alternative is to express DNA results as genome/genome equivalents.