Authentication of species in meat products by genetic techniques

Abstract

In the present work, a method for the authentication of meat products was developed, using Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) followed by Forensically Informative Nucleotide Sequencing (FINS). This study describes the use of sequencing of the cytochrome b gene of the mtDNA in a wide variety of species to diagnose adulteration of meat through the substitution from one species to another that have less commercial value. The main importance of this work is to deal with a wide variety of species that have not previously been analyzed. This methodology strategy allows the authentication of meat species in all kind of products, fresh, or precooked products, the more usual format for marketing in that species. This method shows a specificity of 100%. The developed methodology was validated and finally applied to 20 commercial samples including some that had been subjected to intensive thermal treatment. In 15% of the products analyzed, the name of the species displayed in the label was not in agreement with the identified species. The main novelty of this work lies in the fact that it allows the identification of a large number of meat species not analyzed so far in previous works. In this work are included meat species, which can be easily found in our markets, and a wide variety of others whose consumption is common in other parts of the world. Therefore, this technique can be used as a routine method to avoid the mislabeling in the marketing of these products and to assess their correct traceability.