Food Diagnostics - Meat Speciation

How to Test for Meat Speciation

The 2013 horse meat scandal in Europe has made the testing for meat species important. Besides wrong labelling of meat, meat speciation is important for halal and kosher products where pork is required to be absent. Such meat adulterations can be detected using real time PCR and can be quantified. Besides meat speciation, Bioscience Diagnostics Singapore provides kits for fish and milk adulteration. Identification of meat at the specie level is done by analyzing the product for the specific DNA using real time PCR. However sub specie identification is not possible due to the absence of any highly conserved region for the sub specie. Raw, processed, cooked meat speciation is possible as long as about 10 copies of DNA is present.