According to research by a team at Universidad Complutense de Madrid related to the detection of adulteration with horse meat in other meat products, a new method that can more quickly and precisely identify the adulteration has been developed.
French butcher shop selling horse meat
A collaboration of experts has developed an electrochemical biosensor capable of detecting, in just one hour, processes of adulteration of beef with horse meat.
© 2017 by Tsaag Valren
Fraud in meat products has become, in recent years, a battle of the food industry and public health. Although there are numerous strategies to detect it, they are not sufficiently selective and sensitive to differentiate close animal species.
A collaboration of experts has developed an electrochemical biosensor capable of detecting, in just one hour, processes of adulteration of beef with horse meat.
"Thus, it is possible to identify selectively and without false positives any type of horse meat, regardless of race," says F. Javier Gallego, researcher of the department of Genetics of the UCM.
This biosensor is capable of discriminating in only one hour and with statistically significant differences between beef meat unadulterated and adulterated with only 0.5% (w/w) of horse meat -- level required by European legislation -.
Until now, the assays and strategies to detect these meat adulterations were based on immunological, spectroscopic or molecular biology techniques.
These methods "are often not sufficiently selective to differentiate close animal species, due to the possibility of cross-reactions, or sufficiently reliable in processed products due to the denaturation and degradation of the biomolecules (proteins and nuclear DNA) that are produced by these thermal treatments ," explains Susana Campuzano, a researcher in the department of Analytical Chemistry of the UCM and co-author of the study published in Analytical Chemistry.