Rapid Poultry Spoilage Evaluation Using Portable Fiber-Optic Raman Spectrometer

The freshness changes in poultry fillets during storage were studied using a portable fiber-optic Raman spectrometer. Poultry fillets with the same storage life (9 days) and expiry date were purchased from a local store and stored at 4 °C. Their Raman spectra were measured on a daily basis up to day 21 using a QE Pro-Raman spectrometer with a laser excitation wavelength of 785 nm. The complex spectra were analyzed using Principal Components Analysis (PCA), which resulted in a separation of the samples into three quality classes according to their freshness: fresh, semi-fresh, and spoiled. These classes were based on and similar to the information inferred from the product label on the packages of poultry fillets. The PCA loadings revealed a decrease in the protein content of the poultry meat during spoilage, an increase in the formation of free amino acids, an increase in oxidation of amino acid residues, and an increase in microbial growth on the surface of the poultry fillets, as well as revealing information about hydrophobic interaction around the aliphatic residues. Similar groupings (fresh, semi-fresh, and spoiled) were also obtained from the results of an Agglomerative Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (AHCA) of the first five principal components. The results allow the conclusion that the portable fiber-optic Raman spectrometer can be used as a reliable and fast method for real-time freshness evaluation of poultry during storage

Methods for Seafood Authenticity Testing in Europe

56 pages, 5 figuresSeafood authenticity is a key parameter for seafood quality, particularly in Europe where regulations provide a strict framework for seafood labeling. A wide variety of methods are commonly used in control laboratories (private or public) to identify seafood species, but emergent approaches for the development of new and fast DNA- and protein-based methods for species differentiation are also considered. To address the challenges in controlling further labeling requirements in the latest European legislation on seafood product traceability and labeling (Regulation (EU) 1379/2013), a review of the development of methods to identify fishing areas and to distinguish between wild and farmed fish, as well as an overview of the advanced methods that could be used for differentiation of fresh and frozen-thawed fish, is given. These methods will become increasingly important in the near future as the risk-based control of food authenticity is prescribed by the new EU control regulation (Regulation (EU) 2017/625)N