Biochip Technology for the Detection of Animal Species in Meat Products

The verification of declared components in meat products is an essential task of food control agencies worldwide. To date, the ELISA and species-specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR) are two commonly applied analytical tools employed by many authorized food control laboratories. These trusted methods however do not allow the simultaneous detection of all the animal species present in a meat sample. Additionally, detection of undeclared components resulting from inadvertent contamination or deliberate adulteration of the meat products requires additional processing of the samples, resulting in increased expenditure. The use of DNA biochip analysis that allows simultaneous processing of many meat products, while concomitantly generating results for the detection of all animal species present in the meat products is thus highly desirable. In this work, two commercially available animal chip detection systems (CarnoCheck Test Kit and MEAT(species) LCD Array) are compared in terms of sensitivity, robustness, reproducibility, and ease of handling. The two animal species differentiation biochip methods compared well in efficiency and could simultaneously detect from eight to 14 animal species in the meat products. Detection limits were found to be in the range of 0.1% to 0.5% in meat admixtures, with good reproducibility of results. More than 70 commercially available meat samples were analyzed in this work, with the results validated against traditional PCR methodology. Both biochip methods performed well and could be implemented for routine use in any food control agency.