Differentiation of pork from beef, chicken, mutton and chevon according to their primary amino acids content for halal authentication

Abstract

The detection of pork in various food products has been an important subject of study in many countries. The current study was aimed to differentiate pork from selected meats of beef, mutton, chevon and chicken based on their primary amino acid contents using reverse phase-high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) with derivatization by o-phthalaldehyde (OPA) and ultraviolet (UV) detection. The results show that the most discriminative amino acids between pork and others were
valine, histidine, serine, alanine and arginine. The findings here lay the ground work for the future research to develop a marker for halal meat authentication based on the amino acids content.

Keywords: RP-HPLC, OPA, Amino acids, halal meat, pork