DNA identification of animals to detect food counterfeiting

Abstract

The article describes state-of-the-art approaches to the species and breed identification of even-toed ungulates, including the determination of subspecies of the Bovinae subfamily and the belonging of breeds of bovine (Bos taurus) subspecies using breed-specific SNP markers that differentiate the gene pool of meat or dairy cattle; the accredited activity results of the Institute of Genetics and Cytology of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus on the species identification of the meat ingredients of animals and poultry in food products and raw material are provided to detect adulterations and prove the quality conformance. The authors demonstrate their own results related to the studies on the COI gene polymorphism of mitochondrial DNA of the European bison (Bison bonasus), the American bison (Bison bison), cattle (Bos taurus taurus). A need for developing of species and breed identification technologies allowing to determine the belonging of an individual to a specific subspecies or breed to obtain information that may be used in forensic science is substantiated. The importance of developing of quantitative PCR techniques for the rigorous calculation of an adulteration content in meat products and differentiation between the deliberately produced fake and the technically inevitable contamination of food raw material arising from technological meat processing is justified.