Development and Application of Genomic Markers for the Quantification of Meat in Meat Products

The Food Labelling Regulations requires a quantitative declaration (QUID) to be made for ingredients which are mentioned in the name of the food. In meat products, the amount of a named species ingredient will be given instead of the total minimum meat content. Existing analytical methods are only suitable for screening for species determination and are unsuitable for quantitative determination (MAFF Food Surveillance Information Sheet (1999) number 176).
<p>TaqMan Polymerse Chain Reaction was used in detection and quantification of meat species in previous FSA projects (Q01010/Q01056). The initial developed assays were based on the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene and evaluated the applicability of using the assays to quantify meat species in meat admixtures. The later project developed assays to the single copy genomic target glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase gene to enable improved quantification of meat species by removing variation due to possible differences in numbers of mitochondria between tissues. This current project is continuing work started in Q01056 on the development and application of TaqMan assays using genomic targets.