Abstract

In recent years there has been a significant increase in fraud cases in different food sectors. The complex nature of our globalized food supply chains and the economic motivation to provide cheaper food products have contributed to the prevalence of food fraud (20). In this regard, the European Parliament and the Council approved “Regulation (EC) No 178/2002” states the general principles and requirements of food law (General Food Law Regulation), stating that producers need to provide an appropriate declaration of ingredients, i.e. by naming species components of food products. In this context, verification of food products authenticity is nowadays one of the most requested requirements for distributors and consumers for reasons of transparency of labelling, ethnic origins, public health and economic transactions. The Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies represent a turning point in the food conformity assessment field, particularly for species identification in matrixes composed of a blend of two or more species. In this study, NGS technologies were applied by testing its usefulness to the food ingredient traceability. DNA sequencing analysis of food products enables species detection in a completely unbiased manner, allowing the detection of fraud by mixing undeclared species. Using selected primers to amplify barcode genes, followed by high throughput DNA sequencing and complex tailored bioinformatics analysis, it is now possible to conduct a complete food ingredient screening analysis, even in complex mixtures and highly processed food items. With this cutting-edge approach, we developed a fast, safe and economically effective solution for species identification and fraud detection. In this study, we present the successful results of our internal NGS pipeline in commercial samples like fish, mammalian, birds, crustacean mollusk and vegetable products, apart from meeting the agro-food industry needs regarding food safety and consumer rights.