An authentic system for the quality assurance of birds nest products based on their physical, chemical and biological properties

Quality is a paramount factor for foods and medicines. Recent incidents of fake instant birds’ nest in the market definitely affect people’s confidence on the consumption of this expensive functional food. Eventually, it will reduce the competitiveness of all local manufacturers in the global market. Therefore, need to establish an authentic system for verifying the genuine and good birds nest is vital to our economy. Currently, the quality of birds’ nest is merely judged by personal experience and by oral feeling, which is neither scientific nor quantitative. This project aimed at setting up an authentic evaluation method via systematic characterization of birds nest currently available in the market. Analytical conditions using capillary electrophoresis (CE) had been developed for the analysis of amino acids in birds nest and fingerprint of amino acid for each type of birds nest established. Protein analysis was applied to identify unique proteins in each sample and unique protein bands were observed for some samples. When the content of epidermal growth factor was determined by means of Western blotting, it was noted that significant differences were amongst each samples and not necessary matching the results from oral test. In a bid to access the reliability of a reported GC-MS method for neuraminate, vary conditions had no significant effect on the profile of other markers. Hence, this method together with the western blotting could be the reliable authentic methods for the quality assurance of birds nest product.