Identification of meat products by shotgun spectral matching

What is it about?

In this paper we demonstrate how shotgun peptide sequencing by tandem mass spectrometry can be used to identify animal species in meat products and determine the composition in mixed-species products.

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Why is it important?

Detecting fraud and authenticating food product is important for human health and environmental reasons. As consumers, we also have a right to know that we get and what we eat. Recent years has seen a number of scandals with horse meat labeled as beef and fraudulent substitution of one fish species for other, less expensive, alternatives. Our method nicely complements DNA-based techniques in identifying biological species and detecting contamination and adulteration of meat products.