A qualitative peptide biomarker approach to identify piscine gelatine in products to support food security

Abstract

Due to allergy concerns, it is mandatory under EU law to declare in food products all ingredients derived from fish. Gelatine is prepared from the waste collagen of animal carcasses, including piscine, bovine and porcine materials, and is an ingredient in a wide range of foods. The Elliott Review into the integrity and assurance of food supply networks highlighted requirements for analytical surveillance methods to support due diligence, food safety and authenticity. We present the development of a method to extract gelatine from foods and determine the presence of piscine gelatine by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry using a suite of sixteen piscine marker peptides. The method has been successfully applied to gelatine granules, capsules and composite retail food products. While a study is required to determine parameters including the limit of detection of this method, the data indicate the method is reproducible between replicates of sub-samples and applies to a range of piscine gelatines collected over 16 years. Once validation studies are complete, there is potential for enforcement officers to apply the technology to verify the authenticity of fish products to support consumers in ensuring food safety and also food provenance relating to animal origin.

Keywords:

• Chromatography – LC/MS
• allergens
• animal products – meat
• gelatine
• confectionary
• dietary supplements
• ingredients

Disclosure statement

This work did not receive any funding, other than from a government agency. As authors, we do not have anything to disclose in relation to this text and have no financial interests related to the matter and there is no IP relating to this review manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge the Defra Food Policy Unit for funding this study and for permission to publish (Defra R&D Reference FA0177) and Defra and their Authenticity Methods Working Group for involvement in study design and critical review of the outputs. We gratefully acknowledge the TEMPERA ETN (European Training Network) for supporting a student secondment during this study (Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 722606). The TEMPERA ETN project received funding from the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 722606 and the student was also supported by Devro PLC, UK, a beneficiary of TEMPERA ETN. A studentship funded by the Royal Society Newton Fellowships and the European Research Council Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions MAFRI (Grant agreement 660337, https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/660337) supported the provision of many of the piscine collagen sequences.