Meat Speciation using X-Pulse

In recent years there have been a number of scandals involving fraudulent mislabelling of meat in the human food sales chain, in order for the perpetrators to gain criminal monetary advantage. One prominent example in 2013 was the horsemeat scandal in Europe, where food products labelled as “beef” were found to contain significant amounts of horsemeat.

To combat this activity, it is important that reputable food producers and regulators have methods at their disposal to quickly and reliably check that a meat product is what it is claimed to be.

The traditional method for identification of meat species is Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and/or gene sequencing which, although highly specific, takes several hours to complete. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) tests are also used, they are cheaper and quicker than the PCR tests, they are still more expensive per test than our benchtop NMR method.

我们的Benchtop NMR方法是与英国诺伦奇的食品研究所（IFR）合作开发的。该方法通过分析从肉样品中提取的高分辨率60MHz NMR光谱或从肉样品中提取的脂肪以确定肉类的脂肪酸组成。不同的肉类表现出不同的脂肪酸型材，并且这些曲线可用于识别所测试的肉类。在实践中，相同肉类样品之间存在一定的自然变化，因此已经开发了化学计量方法来分类脂肪酸谱并提供自动化分化。对于大多数样品，通常少于5分钟，并且对于非常贫样品，通常少于5分钟。

An article published in Food Chemistry (published by Elsevier), co-authored by the Institute of Food Research, Norwich, UK, demonstrates benchtop NMR - 60 MHz¹H NMR as a screening tool for distinguishing beef from horse meat.

To download the “open access” paper, follow the link:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0308814614018391.