Molecular detection of donkey meat in minced beef in Tabriz city

Today, the desire to use minced meat has grown as one of the available raw foods. Due to the economic value of meat, there is the likelihood of using unauthorized meat or other meat in minced meat. There are several methods to detect adulteration in ground meat. One of the best methods for detecting these adulterations is molecular tests like PCR. Today, this technique has been widely used because of its speed, simplicity, sensitivity and specificity. In this research, it was used of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique to detect adulteration in minced meats collected from Tabriz. The PCR primers were designed based on the ND2 sequence of mitochondrial genes of donkey and genome of cow. Amplification sizes were 145 and 274 bp for donkey and cow respectively. Screening of 98 commercial minced meats collected from different parts of Tabriz, 7 samples were showed which have contamination with donkey meat.