Identification of marine mammal species in food products

✍ Scribed by Martinez, Iciar; Dan�elsd�ttir, Anna K

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 272 KB
• Volume: 80
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5142
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-0010(200003)80:4<527::aid-jsfa565>3.0.co;2-7

✦ Synopsis

Reference samples and processed products (frozen, smoked, salted, dried and gravad meat and blubber) from harp seal and minke, sei and ®n whales were tested for species-diagnostic molecular markers by random ampli®cation of polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and single-strand conformational polymorphism (SSCP) analysis of amplicons obtained using consensus primers for mitochondrial cytochrome b (mt cytb). RAPD analysis produced clear ®ngerprints of the products analysed from which the species could be easily identi®ed. The interpretation of the SSCP analysis was less clear, probably owing to the use of consensus primers and, in ®n whales, to intraspeci®c polymorphism. Except for one, all the commercial products were correctly labelled, and it was possible to identify the species in all the products labelled simply as `whale': three of them contained minke whale and two ®n whale.