Identificazione di specie animali in matrici alimentari complesse mediante PCR qualitativa e quantitativa

In the present work molecular methods based on qualitative and Real-Time PCR have been developed to identify, in mixed and cooked foods, the presence of the five most used animal species in food industry: swine, cattle, equine, chicken and turkey. All methods showed high specificity and sensitivity, both in qualitative classical PCR and Real-Time PCR. During the method validation false positives or false negatives were not found. This molecular approach has been applied to both fresh foods (mortadella) and matrices subjected to heat treatment (canned meat, würstel) or sterilization (homogenized), showing to detect all present animal species with a sensitivity less than 1% per mixed species.