India News | Bareilly-based IVRI Develops Kit to Test Meat for Adulteration

Bareilly (UP), Dec 15 (PTI) The Bareilly-based Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI) has developed a kit that can detect the presence of beef or pork in a meat sample, according to senior scientists.

The 'Food Animal Species Identification Kit' has been developed by the livestock products technology division of the IVRI, which is an institute under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).

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The kit uses the Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) method and with it, detection of "adulteration" in meats can be easily done, IVRI scientists Rajiv Ranjan Kumar and S K Mendiratta said.

They said that often there are complaints that mutton and chicken sold in the market is "adulterated" with buffalo meat, beef or pork.

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Till now, there was no such technology in India to detect adulteration in processed meat and kits from foreign companies were generally used to identify the adulteration, the scientists said.

This kit was unveiled on December 9 on the 130th foundation day of the IVRI. The institute got this project almost three-and-half years ago, according to scientists.

To test the technique, meat samples were tested in different institutes of the ICAR, they said.

The kit uses a meat sample of 25 mg and by the DNA method, it can be easily known which animal's meat it is, the scientists said.

Food laboratories can start testing meat using this kit, and efforts are on to patent the technology, they said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)