Rapid visual detection of eight meat species using optical thin-film biosensor chips.

Adulteration of meat products has become a very serious issue nowadays. To protect consumer rights, food labeling is required in many countries, and efficient and accurate detection methods are essential as well. This paper reports an innovative method for the rapid detection and identification of meat species based on a silicon-based optical thin-film biosensor chip with which color change results can be perceived by the naked eye without any expensive instruments. This biosensor system can simultaneously and specifically detect eight meat species, including deer, rabbit, duck, chicken, beef, horse, sheep, and pork. The absolute detection limit of this method was 0.5 pg of deer/beef DNA, and the practical detection limit was 0.001%. The biosensor detection can be completed within 30 min after PCR amplification. Therefore, this assay permits specific, sensitive, rapid, and simple detection of meat species in raw or cooked meat products.

The use of the impedance measurements to distinguish between fresh and frozen-thawed chicken breast muscle.

An impedance system was built to differentiate fresh chicken breasts from those that had been frozen and thawed. Inserting needle electrode pairs of the detecting probe aligned with the longitudinal direction of muscle myofibers (PL) gave more satisfactory results. Learning vector quantization neural network (LVQNN) and partial least square-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) were employed to acquire the prediction accuracy. The results demonstrated that the model using LVQNN achieved a satisfactory prediction accuracy, with a discrimination accuracy for fresh breasts of 100%. Additionally, the recognition results for a single frozen-thawed cycle were greater than 90%, and for two cycles were greater than 88%. The values obtained from PLS-DA were somewhat lower than for LVQNN, being 100% for fresh samples, in excess of 90% for single frozen-thawed cycle and more than 84% for those that had been multiple frozen-thawed. In conclusion, these results showed that the impedance system is a simple and effective application for the discrimination of fresh chicken breasts from frozen-thawed ones.