Spectroscopic techniques for authentication of animal origin foods

Abstract

Milk and milk products, meat, fish and poultry as well as other animal derived foods occupy a pronounced position in human nutrition. Unfortunately, fraud in the food industry is common, resulting in negative economic consequences for customers as well as significant threats to human health and the external environment. As a result, it is critical to develop analytical tools that can quickly detect fraud and validate the authenticity of such products. Authentication of a food product is the process of ensuring that the product matches the assertions on the label and complies with rules. Conventionally, various comprehensive and targeted approaches like molecular, chemical, protein based, and chromatographic techniques are being utilized for identifying the species, origin, peculiar ingredients and the kind of processing method used to produce the particular product. Despite being very accurate and unimpeachable, these techniques ruin the structure of food, are labor intensive, complicated, and can be employed on laboratory scale. Hence the need of hour is to identify alternative, modern instrumentation techniques which can help in overcoming the majority of the limitations offered by traditional methods. Spectroscopy is a quick, low cost, rapid, non-destructive, and emerging approach for verifying authenticity of animal origin foods. In this review authors will envisage the latest spectroscopic techniques being used for detection of fraud or adulteration in meat, fish, poultry, egg, and dairy products. Latest literature pertaining to emerging techniques including their advantages and limitations in comparison to different other commonly used analytical tools will be comprehensively reviewed. Challenges and future prospects of evolving advanced spectroscopic techniques will also be descanted.

Chicken Meat and Beef Identification in UV-Vis Absorbance Spectrum by Applying Savitzky-Golay Method

“…Numerous meat validation techniques have been used to ensure meat product quality, but the techniques that are widely used are mostly destructive, time-consuming, and unsuitable for in-situ, rapid, and real-time report utilization. Spectroscopy can be an alternative technique for assessment since it has the advantage of speed, ease of use, and non-destructive measurement [1][2][3][4].…”

Fish DNA Sensors for Authenticity Assessment—Application to Sardine Species Identification

“…Adulteration is the substitution of one species of fish with another species of lower price and lower quality. Species swaps comprise the most prevalent fish fraud [4]. Sardines are vulnerable to adulteration as they contain valuable nutrients and are widely consumed worldwide.…”

“…The latest advances in spectroscopic techniques for authentication of animal-origin food include terahertz spectroscopy, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, hyperspectral imaging, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), Raman spectroscopy, near-infrared-and mid-infrared spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. UV-Vis and fluorescence spectroscopy have the advantage of being non-destructive, but provide often low distinction ability between closely-related species [4,[8][9][10]. DNA-based methods are preferred for fish identification, especially for canned fish, because DNA is characteristic of each species and resistant to food processing conditions, such as the heat treatment during canning.…”

Molecular Rapid Test for Identification of Tuna Species

“…The existing methods to determine food authenticity are morphology-based approaches, ingredient-targeted analyses, spectroscopic methods, chromatography, and protein-based methods [4][5][6]. Spectroscopic techniques coupled with chemometrics and molecular methods are the most widely used for fish authenticity testing.…”