A Note on Authenticity Identification of Romanian Dairy Products

Abstract

SUMMARY Authenticity identification of different animal fo od products received in the last years an important attention. If in other EU countries pr oducts adulteration cases are quite rare, in Romania cow milk (produced at a lower price and in higher quantities), is often undeclared added into buffalo, goat or ewe milk. To avoid disl oyal competition between those producers who respect the law (concerning correct labeling) a nd those who don’t and for correct consumer’s information, several authenticity identi fication methodologies of dairy products were proposed (Vlaic et al., 2010). The majority of these are based on major mil k proteins analysis. The official European methodology for che eses authenticity identification is based on the IEF analysis of gamma casein fractions, foll owing β-CN plasmin hydrolysis, having the disadvantage that goat and sheep milk cannot be discriminated. In our previous studies we proved the existence of a new β-casein genetic variant in Romanian Buffalo breed, named C BT (Balteanu et al. , 2008; Balteanu, 2010). This makes the European methodology for cheeses authenticity identification unusable for discriminating buffalo and cow milk, due to the similar plasmin di gestion profile of β-casein C BT and cattle β-casein variants. In an extensive study we characte rized the major milk protein polymorphism in the main Romanian cattle, buffalo, sheep and goat breeds (Balteanu, 2010). Therefore the objective of this study was to test t he possibility of using all described allele to discriminate between the milk of these species. In terspecific milk mixtures were prepared from reference samples containing all described gen etic variants in the four farm species, as follows: cattle: buffalo, cattle: sheep, cattle: go at, buffalo: goat, buffalo: sheep, sheep: goat. Isoelectric focusing (IEF) of milk samples was perf ormed as described before (Balteanu et al. , 2007). Based on IEF behavior of each major milk protein and their specie specific genetic variants, the discrimination of each milk type, inc luding differentiation between goat and ovine milk, cow and Romanian buffalo milk, was possible. Our preliminary results indicate the applicability of this proposed method to establ ish authenticity of dairy products. The possibility of using the β-casein C BT as genetic markers for Romanian Buffalo cheeses