Abstract

Food safety and quality are major concerns and any case of food adulteration has a great impact on public opinion. Identification of animal species used in commercial meat products is important with respect to economic and sanitary issues. The aim of this research was to detect ruminant and equine species in minced meat and Egyptian sausage using polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) assay. Species differentiation was performed by digestion of PCR products with Tsp509I and AluI restriction enzymes. Our results indicate that 4 (4%), 3 (3%) and 5 (5%) of examined samples (100) were contaminated with sheep, goat and donkey meat, respectively. These results indicate that 12% of examined samples were adulterated, although they were labeled as beef meat 100%. It can be concluded that molecular methods such as PCR and PCR-RFLP are potentially powerful and reliable techniques for detection of adulteration with different meat species in meat products.

Key words: Polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP), Cytochrome-b gene, identification, adulteration, meat products.