Gelatin controversies in food, pharmaceuticals, and personal care products: Authentication methods, current status, and future challenges

Abstract

Gelatin is a highly purified animal protein of pig, cow, and fish origins and is extensively used in food, pharmaceuticals, and personal care products. However, the acceptability of gelatin products greatly depends on the animal sources of the gelatin. Porcine and bovine gelatins have attractive features but limited acceptance because of religious prohibitions and potential zoonotic threats, whereas fish gelatin is welcomed in all religions and cultures. Thus, source authentication is a must for gelatin products but it is greatly challenging due to the breakdown of both protein and DNA biomarkers in processed gelatins. Therefore, several methods have been proposed for gelatin identification, but a comprehensive and systematic document that includes all of the techniques does not exist. This up-to-date review addresses this research gap and presents, in an accessible format, the major gelatin source authentication techniques, which are primarily nucleic acid and protein based. Instead of presenting these methods in paragraph form which needs much attention in reading, the major methods are schematically depicted, and their comparative features are tabulated. Future technologies are forecasted, and challenges are outlined. Overall, this review paper has the merit to serve as a reference guide for the production and application of gelatin in academia and industry and will act as a platform for the development of improved methods for gelatin authentication.

A UV-cured nanofibrous membrane of vinylbenzylated gelatin-poly(ɛ-caprolactone) dimethacrylate co-network by scalable free surface electrospinning

“…Aiming to mimic the nanofibrous architecture of the extracellular matrix (ECM) of biological tissues, gelatin has been successfully electrospun into nanofibrous membranes. In light of its non-toxicity, biodegradability, biocompatibility, formability and low-cost commercial availability [20], gelatin has been excessively used as building block for the design of smart wound dressing and healing materials [21,22], pharmaceuticals [23], personal care [24] and food industry products [25], as well as drug delivery systems [26][27][28] and scaffolds for tissue engineering [29]. However, electrospun gelatin typically present uncontrollable water-induced swelling and dissolution, and display weak mechanical strength in the hydrated state, which substantially limit long-term fibre performance [30].…”

Differentiation of Bovine and Porcine Gelatines Using Lc-MS/MS and Chemometrics

“…Several methods have been developed, validated and used for differentiation, classification, and identification of gelatine origins. Some reviews also existed reporting analytical methods for authentication analysis of gelatines either in raw materials or in food and pharmaceutical products [8][9][10]. Such methods are immunochemical method used for identification of collagen origins, but this method could be affected by the hydroxylation amount of amino acid of proline, which capable of playing an important role in determining the collagen antigenicity [11], Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy [12], however, this method was only used for certain composition, real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method for identification of certain species DNA present in gelatines, but sometimes the integrity of DNA is destroyed during processing of products containing gelatine [13,14], and high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with uv-vis detector, but this method could not find specific markers for gelatine differentiation [15,16].…”

Chemical and Chemometric Methods for Halal Authentication of Gelatin: An Overview

“…One way to identify the different gelatins is through the study of their intramolecular structures using chemical techniques (Hermanto, Sumarlin, & Fatimah, ). A number of review articles on chemical techniques for differentiation of gelatins have been published (Ali et al., ; Nhari, Ismail, & Che Man, ; Rohman & Che Man, ). To our knowledge, a review study on chemometrics involving mathematical and statistical methods is not yet available.…”