Determination of ground beef adulterated with beef and pork offal by vibrational spectroscopy

With the increasing numbers of economically motivated food adulteration, sensitive, rapid, portable, and cost-effective detection techniques for food fraud is highly demanded. Ground beef products have the potential to be adulterated by the livestock’s by-products, such as beef and pork offal. Traditional techniques failed to meet the requirements by government, food industry, and consumers (i.e. all parties). Therefore, innovative techniques are necessary to avoid food fraud issues. Vibrational spectroscopies, providing the fingerprinting chemical profiles of samples, have the potential to achieve the demands. Techniques include Raman, Fourier-transformed infrared, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopies will be studied in this research project. Feasibilities of using these three types of vibrational spectroscopies for beef adulterated with offal will be examined. Moreover, results obtained from different types of spectroscopies will be compared and the best solution will be proposed based upon the conformability to the requirements by all parties.

Faculty Supervisor:

Xiaonan Lu

Student:

Partner:

Peking University

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Education

University:

The University of British Columbia

Program: