MEAT SPECIES AUTHENTICATION OF CHICKEN, BEEF, PORK, AND THEIR COMBINATIONS IN SAUSAGE BASED ON THE VOLATILE COMPOUND PROFILES

Abstract

Meat counterfeiting still occurs frequently, primarily for economic reasons. In Indonesia, beef is relatively more expensive than chicken or pork, so the practice of substituting beef with chicken or pork is still found. As a Muslim-majority country, this issue is critical in the context of ensuring the food safety and halal security. Various methods, such as PCR, ELISA, and spectroscopy, have been developed to identify meat species in food products. However, the volatilomic approach has begun to be studied as an alternative method that offers speed and is non-destructive. Sausage is a processed meat product with a distinctive aroma produced by volatile compounds, so it can potentially be used for meat species authentication. This study aims to identify volatile compounds that mark meat species in six types of fresh sausages made from chicken, beef, pork, and their combinations. Sausage samples were extracted using the headspace-solid phase microextraction (HS-SPME) technique and analyzed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS). Volatile compound profile data were analyzed using principal component analysis (PCA) to see the natural separation pattern between groups and orthogonal partial least squares-discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) to identify marker compounds. A total of one hundred and twenty-four volatile compounds were identified and classified into 14 groups, with alcohols and aldehydes as the dominant groups (25–38%). The OPLS-DA model showed a fairly clear separation between sausage groups based on the type and combination of meat species. Marker volatile compounds were identified using variable importance in projection (VIP) values >1 and positive correlation coefficients. Volatile marker compounds were found to be hexanal and 1,3-octadiene for chicken and beef sausages, 2-penten-1-ol, (Z)-; 2-hexenal; 1-pentanol; and furan, 2-pentyl- for pork and chicken-pork sausages, and 1-undecanol; octane; heptane, 2,4-dimethyl-; and 1-octene, 6-methyl- for beef-pork and chicken-beef-pork sausages. These findings indicate that GC–MS-based volatilomic analysis with a multivariate approach can be used as a supporting approach in efforts to authenticate meat species in processed products such as sausages.