Food safe kits for detecting animal species in meat products

Food safe kits provide a simple, reliable, and rapid procedure for detecting the presence of an animal species in meat and meat products. The assay is based on 5’ nuclease Real-Time PCR reactions to amplify a unique genomic sequence in the target organism. According to European Commission Directive 2002/86/EC, food ingredients have to be declared. In the case of meat and meat products, the animal species has to be disclosed on the label. Moreover, the species autenticity can be highly relevant to consumers for economic, medical, cultural and religious reasons. Fraudulent substitution of cheaper meats in place of more expensive species, the inclusion of meat in non meat (vegetarian) products and the presence of allergens in food products are clear examples for the importance of this issue (Ballin, 2010; Dooley et al., 2004). Several methods are based on identification of proteins by means of electrophoretic and/or immunological methods. However, these methods are not reliable for application in highly processed and heated products due to the protein deterioration. DNA is more stable than proteins during processing and although it can be fragmented by several processes, modern DNA methodologies like PCR-based techniques still allow the identification of DNA from the different species present in a sample (Lockley & Bardsley, 2000). Real-Time PCR techniques are especially suitable for these products because small fragments of DNA can still be amplified and identified with high sensitivity and specificity (Dooley et al., 2004).