Development of a Rapid-identification Kit for Meat Ingredients in Processed Food

Hong Kong is a megalopolis with limited land area. Hundreds tonnes of foods have imported from peripheral regions every year. To make the transportation more convenient and to keep the nutrient values of the food, processed and frozen or chilled methods are usually adopted. However, it is difficult to identify their meat ingredients by just observing the selling appearances, such as morphological features in trimmed fish or the packed sausages and dumplings. Moreover, accidentally or intentionally mislabelling will mislead the consumers to make their choices. Manufacturers and retailers can increase their profit margin through substitution of low value species. Serious consequences may be resulted if one has allergies or religious restriction in diet. It is worthy for us to develop a fast and simple identification method or tool, providing an efficient monitoring system to prevent such possibilities.In the past few years, DNA barcoding is a molecular method developed to identify the sample species. The FDA of U.S. has accepted the barcoding gene to identify fish samples. The same barcode has also been proven to work on mammalian species. However, the current barcode identification procedure, depending on the sample size, requires 2-3 days for getting results. Based on the current knowledge of DNA barcoding and molecular biology, we will develop a rapid, cost-effective and species-specific identification kit which can identify ingredients in processed food. Particularly, this array-form platform allows detection of mixed species samples in a single identification experiment, hence saving the time and cost for multiple identification procedures of different species.