Beef Authentication and Retrospective Dietary Verification Using Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis of Bovine Muscle and Tail Hair

Abstract

Stable isotope ratio analysis (SIRA) was used as an analytical tool to verify the preslaughter diet of beef cattle. Muscle and tail hair samples were collected from animals fed either pasture (P), a barley-based concentrate (C), silage followed by pasture (SiP), or silage followed by pasture with concentrate (SiPC) for 1 year (n = 25 animals per treatment). The (13)C/(12)C, (15)N/(14)N, (2)H/(1)H, and (34)S/(32)S isotope ratios in muscle clearly reflected those of the diets consumed by the animals. By applying a stepwise canonical discriminant analysis, a good discrimination of bovine meat according to dietary regimen was obtained. On the basis of the classification success rate, the (13)C/(12)C and (34)S/(32)S ratios in muscle were the best indicators for authentication of beef from animals consuming the different diets. Analysis of (13)C/(12)C and (15)N/(14)N in tail hair sections provided an archival record of changes to the diet of the cattle for periods of over 1 year preslaughter.

Stable isotope ratios of blood components and muscle to trace dietary changes in lambs

“…Overlapping data were observed exclusively between P and P-S14 groups. These results suggest that S SIR of muscle could be used to trace the change of diet, confirming what was observed in the multivariate discriminant analysis, as well as the feeding system (pasture v. stall), in agreement with the results provided by Osorio et al (2011) who obtained a good discrimination between concentrate and pasture fed beef.…”

“…N values compared with a concentrate-based one, as previously observed by Moreno-Rojas et al (2008) in lambs and Osorio et al (2011) in beef. However, no differences were observed in the d 15 N values in the P group compared with the P-S37 and P-S14 groups.…”

“…In line with the carbon SIR values of pasture and concentrates, the P treatment resulted in the lowest values and the S treatment in the highest. To our knowledge, the effect of switching from a C 3 pasture to a C 3 concentrate diet on muscle d 13 C has never been investigated, whereas the discrimination between muscle from animals raised exclusively on C 3 -pasture or on C 3 -concentrates has been previously achieved (Moreno-Rojas et al, 2008;Osorio et al, 2011). Muscle d The d 13 C in muscle lipid fraction was also significantly affected by diet (Table 5), with values for the P group being lower compared with the other experimental groups.…”

“…Plasma represents a reliable tissue, owing to its prompt response to the dietary variations. If the finishing diet consists in C 3 concentrates, our data and results by Osorio et al (2011) suggest that its detection should be feasible. However, some issues have to be considered: the magnitude of the difference between forages and concentrate SIRs, the different tissue's turnover rate, the effect of nutritive allowance on the elements turnover rate, as observed in muscle (Harrison et al, 2011), the length of the finishing period, the source of water.…”

Combination of multi-element and stable isotope analysis improved the traceability of chicken from four provinces of China

“…Recently, there have been many reports on the application of stable isotope and multi-element analysis, followed by chemometrics, to identify the origin of agro-products, including oil (Angerosa et al, 1999;Richter, Spangenberg, Kreuzer, & Leiber, 2010), milk (Chesson, Podlesak, Thompson, Cerling, & Ehleringer, 2008;Chesson, Valenzuela, O'Grady, Cerling, & Ehleringer, 2010;Crittenden et al, 2007), wine (Dutra et al, 2011), tea (Pilgrim, Watlin, & Grice, 2010), and so on. In recent years, several studies have been reported on distinguishing the meat origins by various analytical tools (Franke, Gremaud, Hadorn, & Kreuzer, 2005;Osorio, Moloney, Schmidt, & Monahan, 2011a;Perini, Camin, Bontempo, Rossmann, & Piasentier, 2009;Sacco, Brescia, Buccolieri, & Jambrenghi, 2005). Characteristic fingerprints of elements may directly depend on the environment that the animals lived in and the locally grown feeds (Franke et al, 2005;Millet, Van den, De Smet, & Janssens, 2005;Osorio, Moloney, Schmidt, & Monahan, 2011b;Reykdal, Rabieh, Steingrimsdottir, & Gunnlaugsdottir, 2011).…”