Food adulteration is a growing concern amongst the consumers. Moreover, food adulteration might affect various consumer groups who have strict diet requirements, whether due to religious belief or health reasons. Food adulteration also contributes to an unfair trade competition that might indirectly affect the economy.

Adulteration of meat-based products involving replacing high-priced meat with lower-priced meat accounts for 19.25% of all food fraud activities, according to the European Commission’s studies in 2018. DNA-based techniques are often used for fraud detection in raw meat species and heat-processed meat products. The reason is that DNA has better resilience towards high heat, especially during food processing such as cooking. In the case of Ts. Nurhayatie et al., they are using the TaqMan-based real-time PCR assay technique. The real advantage of this technique compared to the other DNA-based techniques is that it is more sensitive, and able to provide quantitative output without the need of post-PCR processing.

Ts. Nurhayatie et al. have demonstrated the technique on the detection of pork DNA on the spiked chicken and beef meatball models. Initially, these 35 g per piece chicken and beef meatball models were spiked with 10% (weight for weight) pork meat. The technique has demonstrated that it can detect as low as 0.01 nanogram per microlitre and 0.1 nanogram per microlitre of pork DNA in uncooked spiked beef and chicken meatball models, respectively. For cooked spiked beef and chicken meatball models, the pork DNA was detected at a concentration of 0.1 nanogram per microlitre. The ability to detect the pork DNA even for cooked meatball models shows the workability of the technique proposed by the Ts Nurhayatie et al.