LGC has delivered Defra-funded food-authenticity testing training course to food forensic scientists, to help verify the authenticity of foods and their ingredients.
As part of Defra (Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs)'s food-authenticity programme, LGC has been contracted to share its DNA-sequencing and food-chemistry expertise, and to provide the key training and knowledge required to access commercial DNA-sequencing services and appropriate databases to verify species claims in food labelling.
Food fraud within the UK and Europe is a continuing problem.
Expensive fish, high-quality Basmati rice, durum wheat and exotic fruit juices are all vulnerable to the fraudster passing off cheap imitations for gain, often hitting less well-off consumers disproportionately.
Meat from endangered animal species or recycled byproducts can find their way into the supply chain.
Careless or irresponsible food manufacturers can put food-allergy sufferers at risk and undermine the lifestyle and health choices of unsuspecting consumers.
Food forensic scientists are tackling the problem of premium food items being counterfeited or substituted by cheap or fake products.
Although DNA profiling has been successfully deployed in the fight against fraudsters, gaining evidence of sufficient forensic robustness to convict is often difficult and expensive.
Traditionally, DNA sequencing has been a labour-intensive and time-consuming affair, but the advent of dye-based chain-terminator sequencing technology in the 1970s led to the adaptation of DNA sequencing for automated analyses.
Current DNA-sequencing technologies offer very high throughput coupled with quick turnaround times at cost-effective prices per sample.
This has meant that the approach has become more accessible for scientists looking to use it for routine analyses.
Results from the DNA sequencing of food will be useful to confirm the accuracy of methods currently used to detect fish, meat or fruit and vegetable products from particular species, as well as to identify further species currently not included in food-authenticity tests.
The course was run by LGC at its Teddington headquarters in South West London on 9 February 2011.
LGC Genomics, the genomics division of LGC, recently announced the acquisition of the latest next-generation sequencing technology Illumina Hiseq 2000 to its sequencing portfolio at its Berlin facilities.
The Illumina Hiseq 2000 sequencing platform - together with the Roche GS FLX Titanium and the high-capacity Sanger sequencing ABI 3730xl technologies - will allow LGC Genomics to offer the whole range of next-generation sequencing services.
