Oligomolecular Tagging for Food Traceability and Authenticity Determination

用于食品追溯和真伪判定的寡分子标签

• 批准号: 36675-2012
• 负责人: Low, Nicholas
• 金额: $ 2.26万
• 依托单位: University of Saskatchewan
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2013-01-01 至 2014-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=521416
• 关键词: Oligomolecular; Tagging; Food; Traceability; Authenticity

The adulteration of foods takes many forms, from geographical origin (e.g. coffee grown in Mexico labeled as Columbian) to debasing (e.g. adding less expensive carbohydrate sources to a carbohydrate rich food, such as fruit juices). It is estimated that 5-10% of foods sold commercially are adulterated. With the commercial value of foods in Canada in 2009 estimated at $70 billion, adulteration is a fraudulent practice of significant economic impact. Economic impacts include the damage to industry reputation and losses in market share, recall costs, and public health costs due to illness and/or death. The recent (2008) 'melamine incident' affected 290,000 consumers worldwide, cost over $10 billion and resulted in six deaths. Governments and food industry responses include the implementation of traceability procedures to aid in ensuring food safety and integrity, and by imposing stricter 'rules of origin' labeling requirements. Enforcing rules of origin labeling regulations, however, is difficult without credible methods of establishing traceability and authenticity. Traceability is defined as the ability to track a product batch and its history through the whole, or part, of a production chain from harvest through transport, storage, processing, distribution and sales. Currently, coding systems such as the EAN-UCC system by GS1 are internationally recommended for the identification of product specifications such as, the manufacturer, lot number, and production, packaging and expiration dates. These standards are characterized by two significant weaknesses. First, they are an external labeling system that can be readily removed or manipulated. In addition, the product can be wholly substituted or debased without detection. Second, they do not automatically produce a comprehensive traceability system for any given product so that separate analyses are required. Molecular tagging of foods/ingredients with characterized oligosaccharides or synthetic oligonucleotides, as proposed in this research has the potential to be more applicable and cost efficient as a food tracing and first stage authenticity system.

食品掺假有多种形式，从地理来源（例如在墨西哥种植的咖啡被标记为哥伦比亚）到贬低（例如在富含碳水化合物的食物中添加较便宜的碳水化合物来源，如果汁）。据估计，商业销售的食品中有5-10%是掺假的。2009年，加拿大食品的商业价值估计为700亿美元，掺假是一种具有重大经济影响的欺诈行为。经济影响包括对行业声誉的损害和市场份额的损失，召回成本以及因疾病和/或死亡而造成的公共卫生成本。最近（2008年）的“三聚氰胺事件”影响了全球29万消费者，造成超过100亿美元的损失，并导致6人死亡。政府和食品行业的应对措施包括实施可追溯性程序，以帮助确保食品安全和完整性，并实施更严格的“原产地规则”标签要求。然而，如果没有可靠的方法来确定可追溯性和真实性，执行原产地标签规则是困难的。可追溯性被定义为在整个或部分生产链中跟踪产品批次及其历史的能力，从收获到运输，储存，加工，分销和销售。目前，国际上推荐使用编码系统（如GS1的EAN-UCC系统）来识别产品规格，如制造商、批号、生产、包装和有效期。这些标准有两个明显的弱点。首先，它们是一种外部标签系统，可以很容易地去除或操作。此外，产品可以完全替代或降级而不被检测。第二，它们不能自动为任何特定的产品产生一个全面的可追溯性系统，因此需要单独的分析。在这项研究中提出的具有特征性寡糖或合成寡核苷酸的食品/成分的分子标记具有作为食品追溯和第一阶段真实性系统的更适用性和成本效益的潜力。