Avi Blizovsky
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A single test will be able to find out if food samples contain one of 32 different types of meat, thus answering a series of questions: Was the chicken fed leftover meat? Is the tuna for which a high price is required really a quality variety? Does the hamburger you eat include rodent or even human organs? Do reputable companies add meat to cow feed and thus endanger public health by spreading mad cow disease?
The DNA chip is currently being tested by European food authorities. It is also possible that food chains will use it to check their suppliers. "Many subjects can be tested at once," says Thomas Schlumberger, director of clinical genetics at Affymetrix from California, which developed the chip known as FoodExpert-ID in collaboration with BioMyrieux from France.
The chip will mainly be used to make sure that food products contain the substances they are supposed to contain - and do not contain substances they are not supposed to contain. For example, you can verify that foie gras does contain foie gras. The test can also reveal acts of fraud, such as the scam that was exposed in Europe in May 2002, when some chicken coopers were caught feeding the chickens with leftover beef and pork. In addition to the health risk, following the scam, people whose religion forbids it unknowingly ate beef.
The Food Standards Institute in Great Britain is testing the chip in comparison to a system made by the California-based company Agilent, which is in earlier trial stages. However, it is feared that the fraudsters will overcome the chip and destroy the remaining DNA from the beef or pork before they use it on the animals. If the chip nevertheless proves itself, then "we will be able to derive a lot of benefit from it," says the spokesman for the Ministry of the Environment in Great Britain.
DNA testing chips have been around for a long time, but according to Affymetrix its chip is the first mainstream commercial application of the technology. The surface of the chip includes DNA segments unique to each strain, arranged in special areas. The food samples are exposed to fluorescent substances and read by a laser scanner. If a match is found, the scanner reveals which type of meat it is. The cost of the equipment needed to perform the test is estimated at 250,000 dollars. Each test costs about 350 to 550 dollars. The next generations of the system will make it possible to test a wider variety of meat varieties.
From the NewScientist.com website March 4, 2004
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