4. Discussion
Proper labeling of meat products is important in fair-trade, and
to enable consumers to make informed choices (Ballin et al., 2009).
Meat adulteration is now challenging the credibility of Chinese food
industry, and the government has determined to control the
fraudulent substitution. As the main technique of species screen,
PCR-based methodologies have been accepted by the national
standard. However, these standardized methods are cumbered by
the low-throughput and thus, a reliable multiplex PCR approach
might be an available complementarity. In the present study, we
applied a multiplex PCR method established by Matsunaga et al.
(1999) to identify different kinds of meat products from the
market. This ready-made method allowed a rapid and highthroughput
species determination in half-cooked and cooked
meats, and quite a number of meat adulterations and substitutions
were revealed. However, in the assay of some further-processed
foods, the method was not sensitive enough. These food samples
contained crushed meat with multiple steps of food processing
which leaded to extensive DNA degradation, and the extracted DNA
was lower than the LOD of multiplex PCR.