Memoona Iqbal and Prof. Dr Wasim Shehzad
Meat is a rich source of protein in human diet playing vital role for nutrition and health. The halal meat is safe and hygienic for human consumption and fulfills the religious sentiments as well as health requirements.
The current situation in Pakistan is not satisfactory for the meat export due to lack of law enforcement and available methods for the accurate identification of meat species.
The overall picture for the country is not satisfactory enough regarding anti-adulteration measures. So meat species identification is crucial to ensure the consumer’s trust towards the consumption of meat and meat products.
The adulteration of low quality meat into high quality meat and meat products, product mislabeling and substitution are very common practices around the globe and are of great concern.
Because of these reasons meat specie identification requires great attention to control food quality by implication of food conservation laws related to meat authentication.
Currently food authenticity is major issue for consumers, researchers, policy makers and industry at all production levels, principally in the meat industry.
The traceability of meat constituent in food increases consumer’s confidence in food products.
Identification methods for avoiding illegal adulteration and authentication of livestock or poultry products are of vital importance.
For the meat authentication, physical, anatomical, histological and chemical methods are commonly used all these methods have their own limitations.
Furthermore, these methods are reliable only for identification of uncooked raw meat species and have no application for minced as well as processed meat products.
Reliable molecular based genetic tests for few meat species are available. There was a need of time to develop such techniques which identify more meat species in less time as precise diagnosis paves the way to control meat adulteration even in processed and minced meat products.
Advanced DNA based molecular methods have been developed by Prof. Dr. Wasim Shahzad at the Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, UVAS, Lahore.
These advanced molecular techniques have the ability to identify suspected as well as unknown meat species in food chain.
These unknown meat species may include the banned meat species (donkey, pork, horse and dog) or low value meat species, as a consequence of adulteration for the sake of profit.
Furthermore, these tests can also be used to quantify the meat species in very complex admixtures.
Through these tests, specie can be identified even from a very minute quantity of highly degraded meat sample as both cooked and raw meat.
It can also detect from meat products like meat mince. Moreover, the tests are too sensitive to diagnose from the vomit or stool samples.
With the motive to serve the community, Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology (IBBt), University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS), Lahore, has developed the reliable DNA based identification of different meat species and is now offering this testing facility to its stakeholders.
UVAS has always been very proactive to serve the meat industry through its quality services for ensuring the meat quality and halal meat certification.
This halal certification and accurate meat specie identification will eventually open the new avenues of meat export to the global market and increase the foreign remittances.
