Review of current techniques for the verification of the species origin of meat

Abstract

An overview of developments that have occurred in meat species identification over the last decade is presented. It starts by noting the different requirements for speciation techniques over the period, describes the complex nature of meat in terms of chemical composition and shows how the chain of events from slaughter to retail gives rise to opportunities for deliberate adulteration or innocent contamination. The limitations of techniques such as electrophoresis and isoelectrofocusing are pointed out where the analysis of mixed meats is concerned; attention then focuses on the range of techniques based on antigen-antibody interactions: agar gel immunodiffusion, counter immuno-electrophoresis and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in three formats. The choice of analyte is discussed, firstly for the analyses of raw meat materials and secondly, for heat-processed meat products. In the first example, blood serum proteins are used almost exclusively despite the limitation that their presence does not necessarily denote the presence of the corresponding muscle tissue (meat). For cooked products, a new range of antisera are necessary, based on thermally stable components derived from the tissues. By using different formats of ELISA, it is demonstrated that different responses can be obtained for heat-processed meat versus processed offal, and that determination of a species meat content in a cooked mixed meat product is possible. Techniques for improving the specificity and performance of antisera are discussed briefly, with the future introduction of thermally stable, muscle-specific monoclonal antisera being seen as the way forward.