DNA barcoding alone sufficient to detect fraudulent deer products
Many Europeans are fretting these days over what they eat, and whether horse meat might have adulterated their pork chops. Food fraud has been dominating headlines globally - calling for new policies in law enforcement and more robust methods for successful food identification and authentication. As companies and manufacturers resort to fraudulent practices to extract more cash from the gullible public, it is estimated that up to 7% of the consumer supply chain contains hidden ingredients (i.e. – not disclosed on the label). And while all too often policymakers seem oblivious to the problem, the growing awareness of plain criminal activity in food supply has stimulated an increase in published research on animal DNA testing, either for the identification of species or for the genetic linkage of a sample to a particular organism.