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Species identification - analysis

Food fraud sometimes involves replacing expensive meats or fish with cheaper varieties in order to increase profits. The Swedish Food Agency employs accredited methods for species identification of meat, poultry and fish.

Food fraud damages consumer confidence in food producers throughout the supply chain, from farmer to shop proprietor. Deliberately mislabelling food is a violation of national and international legislation and regulation.

The Swedish Food Agency has the analytical capacity to determine the species of various mammals and birds, including game such as reindeer and elk. For mammals and birds, specific realtime PCR-methods are used.

It is also possible to determine fish species. Identification of fish and fish roe are based on isoelectric focusing (IEF). The methos is not suitable for heated samples or samples including several species.

Accredited methods

The accredited methods used by the Swedish Food Agency to analyse different species are listed below.

Please contact us if you would like further information and/or prices for the analyses we offer.

Martin Sandberg
Head of Unit Molecular Biology
Email: firstname.sirname@slv.se

Mammals

Species	Latin	Analytical technique
Pig	Sus scrofa	Real-time PCR
Horse	Equus caballus	Real-time PCR
Cattle	Bos taurus	Real-time PCR
Sheep	Ovis aries	Real-time PCR
Goat	Capra hircus	Real-time PCR
Elk	Alces alces	Real-time PCR
Reindeer	Rangifer tarandus	Real-time PCR
Red deer	Cervus elaphus	Real-time PCR
Fallow deer	Dama dama	Real-time PCR
Roe deer	Capreolus capreolus	Real-time PCR

Birds

Duck	Anas platyrhynchos domesticus	Analytical technique
Ostrich	Strutio camelus	Real-time PCR
Pheasant	Phasanius colchicus	Real-time PCR
Quail	Coturnix coturnix	Real-time PCR
Turkey	Meleagris gallopavo	Real-time PCR
Chicken	Gallus gallus domesticus	Real-time PCR