In January, the UK Food Safety Authority found beef burgers which actually contained up to 100% horse meat during a routine inspection. This month horse meat was also found in other deep frozen products like lasagna and mousaka, which were labeled as 100% beef. Although it is not illegal to use horse meat as an ingredient, it is illegal not to label the product accordingly or sell a product which contains horse meat as 100% beef. Several products have been taken from the market already.

Many laboratories are now facing the question of how to test meat and processed meat products for the presence of horse meat.

The most reliable and sensitive test to detect horse meat in raw as well as processed meat products is a PCR based test. R-Biopharm offers the SureFood® ANIMAL ID Horse (S6018) to detect even small amounts of horse meat in food products. In combination with SureFood® PREP Animal, for an efficient DNA extraction, the SureFood® ANIMAL ID Horse can be used on most real-time PCR instruments. Results are available in less than 2 hours.

The SureFood ANIMAL ID product range offers a broad variety of parameters to tests for all kinds of food adulteration.