Identification of Contaminants (Animal Hair) Using DNA Testing

Introduction

If a contaminant is discovered during the process of manufacturing foods, medicines, and cosmetics, etc., it is essential to identify the contaminant not only to clarify the cause or source of the contamination but for establishing a standard operating procedure to prevent the recurrence of such contamination as required in hygiene control. Presumptive inspection of contaminants is typically conducted by microscopic observation, but since this requires specialized knowledge and experience, it is difficult for inexperienced individuals to make a clear assessment and to determine the source of contamination, human or animal. Especially, with respect to animal hair, a very common contaminant, it is extremely difficult to determine the type of contamination by visual inspection. Reliable methodology is therefore required to solve this problem. The Aichi Industrial Technology Institute Food Research Center has developed a DNA testing method for identifying the type of animal associated with specific hair contaminants(*). The animal species that can now be detected reliably with this method include 6 types of farm animals (cow, pig, chicken, horse, sheep, and goat), 3 types of pets (dog, cat, and rabbit), and 3 types of rodents (sewer rat, black rat, and house mouse), for a total of 12 animal types. Here we introduce examples of analysis of animal types by DNA testing using a combination of the abovementioned method together with Shimadzu’s MCE-202 MultiNA microchip electrophoresis system.

August 23, 2011 GMT