Can analytical chemists do molecular biology? A survey of the up-skilling of the UK official food control system in DNA food authenticity techniques

That food accurately matches its description or labelling (food authenticity) is increasingly important to consumers and the agrifood sector. Its converse - mislabelling or misdescription or food fraud (when carried out for financial gain), is detrimental to both. A range of activities is used by enforcement authorities to establish authenticity and detect fraud including sampling and analysis. The UK Government, in a 20 year programme, has developed many novel analytical authenticity approaches including high resolution NMR, carbon isotope ratio analysis and DNA techniques. The flexibility, relatively lower costs and probative value of DNA methods render them particularly effective. However their deployment in the forensic environment of UK Official Food Control Laboratories (OCLs), staffed mainly by analytical chemists, required knowledge transfer (KT) of molecular biology techniques. The KT was carried out by the Food Standards Agency's Food Authenticity Programme (now transferred to Defra), and we present here the results of an assessment of its effectiveness. The findings highlight that the KT was well planned and highly effective. Competence in molecular biology in OCLs rose from 22% prior to the KT, based on qualifications and experience, to 69% after the KT based on embedding a suite of DNA methods in 11 out of 16 eligible laboratories. The transfer of 5 DNA methods (fish species, meat and exotic meat species, bushmeat species, Basmati rice, and orange juice adulteration with mandarin juice) have given OCLs an increased range of effectiveness with fish species identification having been particularly successfully applied and resulting in successful prosecutions of fraudulent activity. Given the current financial constraints in UK OCLs, a beneficial outcome has been a strategic refocussing of effort boosting enthusiasm and excitement for food authenticity issues. A further outcome of the transfer and evidence of the uptake of DNA technology has been the adoption of Real Time Polymerase Chain Reaction techniques by a critical mass (31.3%) of OCLs, permitting their advanced application to problematic authenticity issues such as the detection of adulteration of durum wheat pasta with common wheat, detection of meat ingredients in vegetarian foods, and the quantitative determination of GMOs in single ingredient foods such as pasta, rice and soya. Other recommendations arising out of the study are to adapt, to a lab-on-a-chip platform, DNA methods for pig and cattle breed authentication including wild boar, and an improved Basmati rice authentication. Finally, sustainable deployment of DNA methods to address food authenticity and fraud hinges on regulatory salience of the need for it and this, along with future priorities, should be kept under regular review.