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Gelatine is a component of a wide range of foods. It is manufactured as a by-product of the meat industry from bone and hide, mainly from bovine and porcine sources. Accurate food labelling enables consumers to make informed decisions about the food they buy. Since labelling currently relies heavily on due diligence involving a paper trail, there could be benefits in developing a reliable test method for the consumer industries in terms of the species origin of gelatine. We present a method to determine the species origin of gelatines by peptide mass spectrometry methods. An evaluative comparison is also made with ELISA and PCR technologies. Commercial gelatines were found to contain undeclared species. Furthermore, undeclared bovine peptides were observed in commercial injection matrices. This analytical method could therefore support the food industry in terms of determining the species authenticity of gelatine in foods.

Binding products or food ‘glues’ are used throughout the food industry to increase the meat use rate or to augment economic efficiency. Some of these binders contain thrombin from bovine and porcine blood. The European parliament has recently banned thrombin-based additives and labelling legislation governs their use in the US. A mass spectrometry screening method is available to detect the addition of thrombin agents to foods as there is a need to protect consumers and to avoid misleading trade practices. We report the details of an inter-laboratory trial to determine the transferability of this method to operators in various food testing laboratories, each using a different triple quadrupole mass spectrometer design. The trial was successful with the species origin of the binding agent contained in each of the forty three test materials being correctly reported by the participants. This is consistent with a false positive and false negative rate of zero percent. This is the first collaborative study, as far as we are aware, which involves a liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) application to approach a food authenticity issue.