Investigation of goats' milk adulteration with cows' milk by PCR

Abstract

Goats' milk adulteration with cows' milk is becoming a big problem. In the past, the urea-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis assay with different motility of αS1-casein has been applied for the identification of cows' milk adulteration. The detection sensitivity is 1.0%. The aim of this study was to develop a faster and more sensitive method to detect cows' milk which may be present in adulterated goats' milk and goats' milk powder. The published primer was targeted at highly conserved regions in bovine mitochondrial DNA (a 271 bp amplicon). This amplicon was cloned and sequenced to further confirm bovine specific sequence. The chelex-100 was used to separate bovine somatic cells from goats' milk or goats' milk powder samples. Random sampling of different brands of goats' milk powder and tablets from various regions of Taiwan showed the adulterated rate was 20 out of 80 (25%) in goats' milk powders and 12 out of 24 (50%) in goats' milk tablets. With this system, as low as 0.1% cows' milk or cows' milk powder in goat milk or goat milk powder could be identified. This chelex DNA isolation approach provides a fast, highly reproducible and sensitive method for detecting the adulteration of goats' milk products.