Meat Mislabelling in Sausages: A Detailed Exploration Using DNA Analysis Techniques for Product Verification

Abstract

Accurate food labelling is crucial for both food safety and consumer awareness, especially for sausages which are a major protein source for people worldwide. Our study examined a total of 6 different sausage samples: 2 beef, 2 pork, and 2 chicken. Meat primers used for the multiplex PCR procedure were cattle (beef), pig (pork), chicken, sheep, goat, and horse. We hypothesized that 1 out of 6 of the sausage samples would contain undeclared meat species based on the rates of sausage meat contamination in previous Canadian studies (Naaum et al., 2018; Shehata et al., 2019). Our results concluded that at least 16.67% of the 18 sausage samples contained undeclared meat species. Contamination was only found in pork sausage samples which additionally had horse, chicken and cattle DNA detected. While we expected to find a reduced rate of mislabelling compared to a decade ago, the detection of horse meat suggests that new sources of contamination may be emerging. Overall, these findings indicate that the prevalence of undeclared meat species in sausage products persists in the food industry given the health, cultural, and transparency issues involved.