Adulteration of meat products attracted the interest of food safety groups, and it plays a significant part in environmental forensics. Meat products are a good source of protein since they include all essential amino acids and nutrients for humans. Adulteration in meat products is defined as the fraudulent substitution or addition of lower-cost animal or plant proteins, as well as the mislabeling of actual constituents. So, species identification of animal food origin is an important aspect of its control in several countries that are growing concerned about the number of serious food crimes committed by organized criminals. A total of 48 different commercial meat product samples (Canned beef, Handmade sausages, Kofta and Hawawshi samples) Twelve of each were randomly collected from Qalubia Governorate supermarkets and analyzed by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technique. We found Canned beef were free from adulteration while Handmade sausages, Kofta and Hawawshi samples were adulterated by chicken meat (31.2%), canine (4.2%), and equine (8.3%) meat. The present results concluded that PCR assay is the unique test for detecting adulteration of some meat products. Moreover, canned beef strictly undergoes inspection and food control while Handmade meat products used low–cast and undeclared meat because they don’t undergo strict food control. |
