Identification of Raw Ostrich s Meat Impurity with Cattle s or Chicken s meat using Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP) Analysis

In the term of food safety, meat adulteration is a worldwide problem. The aim of the present study is to detect raw ostrich s meat impurity either with cattle s or with chicken s meat using polymerase chain reaction-Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) by targeting the universal primer for mitochondrial cytochrome b gene. A total number of 10 raw meat samples of ostrich s, cattle s, and chicken s meat were collected from Institute slaughterhouses. Nutritional comparisons of meat samples from different three species were done. The sensitivity of PCR-RFLP method was evaluated using model binary samples made from ostrich s meat containing defined percentages of adulteration levels (10%, 5%, and 1% wt/wt) of either cattle s or chicken s meat. Results showed that ostrich s meat is characterized by a favorable fatty acids profile and cholesterol content in comparison to meat from other species. PCR product yielded a 360 bp amplicon which was further digested with restriction endonuclease (RE) Alu I. RFLP method was valuable in the detection of ostrich s meat impurity with cattle s meat at percentage of 10%, 5%, and 1% (wt/wt) using Alu I which digest cattle s fragment into 160 bp and 200 bp fragments, while the cytochrome b fragment of ostrich was not cleaved. However; RFLP technique is unfit in the detection of ostrich s meat adulteration with chicken s meat even with the use of other restriction enzymes as Hind III, Taq I, Mbo I, Hha I, and Bsa I RE. Conclusively, PCR-RFLP method seems to be a reliable technique for the identification of ostrich s meat adulteration with cattle s meat and invaluable in the detection of ostrich s meat adulteration with chicken s meat which may be due to absence of intraspecific polymorphism for these restriction enzymes between ostrich and chicken species.