News

There is a potential for adulteration of emulsion-type sausages with porcine blood plasma because of its low cost, high protein and functional properties. A proteomic method for the detection of porcine blood plasma has been developed by German researchers. After a rapid protein extraction and tryptic digestion, species-specific marker peptides for porcine blood cell proteins (four markers) and plasma proteins (12 markers) were measured by UHPLC-MS/MS. The method was tested on sausages prepared from a variety of pork raw materials spiked with 0.5-5% meat substitution with porcine blood plasma powder, and subjected to different thermal treatments. The 4 plasma peptides were identified as markers for porcine blood plasma addition, and the method could detect down to 0.7% meat substitution, with a 5% error probability for both false positives and negatives.

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The BBC have obtained the results of meat testing carried out in 2017 by local authorities in Scotland in restaurants, supermarkets and manufacturers from Food Standards Scotland (FSS). In total 631 samples were tested and 48 samples (less than 8%) were found to contain DNA of other species not labelled or described on the product. Many of these were considered as cross contamination rather than substitution. However, there were some notable exceptions: such as restaurants serving lamb dishes which were beef, and a restaurant serving beef in oyster sause which was pork. The results differed from those reported by FSA (see 12 September News), which were more targeted on high risk businesses.

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