The identification of animal species in food products is still of great actuality in the context of quality assurance, particularly following the outbreak of BSE. Moreover, animal species differentiation is an important aspect in the scope of an effective protection of species. 

Currently applied methods are either based on immunological investigations, such as ELISA tests, on the identification of animal species-specific proteins, or on duplication and detection of respective animal species-specific genes using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and coupling of both procedures. However, these methods have considerable disadvantages, such as:

• Danger of cross-reaction in the ELISA test and, as a result, the generation of false-positive results
• In highly processed food and feed the proteins specific for animal species are partly completely degraded and thus not  identifiable
• So far applied PSR methods are time-consuming and complicated, since separate reactions have to be performed for each animal species
• A comprehensive analysis of food and feed is not possible. "You cannot find more than what you are searching for." 

Other detection methods using fingerprinting technologies, as the analysis via restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP), though rapid and universially appplicable on a large number of animal species, usually fail if more than two animal species are present in one sample.

To overcome these disadvantages, a method was developed at the IME, which, on the basis of RFLP, allows the detection of species in any food and feedstuff that has been investigated so far. Meanwhile, more than 40 species can be detected with certainty, and the number is constantly increasing.

Which animal species can be detected?