Identification of pork genome in commercial meat extracts for Halal authentication by SYBR green I real‐time PCR

Summary The identification of pork DNA in meat extracts is very important for Halal authentication and Muslim consumers demand protection from falsely labelled meat products. A pig‐specific SYBR green I real‐time PCR assay has been developed to address this issue. Using specific primers for pig mitochondrial DNA, successful amplification has been obtained by DNA extracted from control meat samples. With SYBR green I real‐time PCR, the specificity of the amplification was showed by Tm value. Detection limit of the real‐time PCR was down to 0.1 ng of porcine DNA. An appropriate linearity was obtained by construction of a standard curve based on Ct value and different concentrations of porcine DNA. By conventional PCR, no amplification was shown by porcine DNA less than 0.1 ng. The established method was conducted on commercially available meat extracts for detection and quantification of porcine DNA. The results showed the SYBR green I real‐time PCR could be considered a robust method for Halal authentication of meat extracts.