Nowadays, meat adulteration constitutes an important problem in Egypt. Adulteration causes many problems that need to be considered as economic issues arising from replacement of high commercial value meat species with cheaper or undesired meats, religious issues as pork meat prohibited for Muslims and allergic reactions arising from consumption of some special meats as equine meat species and others. The current study includes a surveillance study aimed to detect the adulteration of beef and poultry meat products with equine and or pork meat species in Damanhur city, El Behera Governorate, Egypt. Over a limited period of one year from February, 2015 to February, 2016, A total of 156 samples of meat and chicken products were collected and divided into two groups; Group (A) includes 96 packaged high brands of three meat processing plants including beef luncheon, burger and kofta (18 samples each), chicken luncheon (18), chicken burger (12) and chicken kofta (12) and Group (B) includes 60 non-packaged low brand samples of beef luncheon, burger, kofta, minced meat and sausage(6 samples each) and chicken luncheon, burger, kofta, minced meat and sausage (6 samples each) from meat shops. All samples were analyzed for detection of adulteration with equine and/or pork meat by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technique using specific primers for equine and pork species. The obtained result revealed that adulteration rate of processed meat products with equine meat species was found to be 3.2 % (5 positive samples out of 156 examined samples) so it was recommended that rapid movement of responsible authorities with cooperation with scientific academies to protect health of consumers and prevent illegal substitution of meat.
Key words: Meat, Poultry, Products, Adulteration, Advanced Biotechnology
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