The increase in the population’s acquisition power in emerging countries like Brazil has resulted in increased consumption of meat, milk and their derivatives, and a consequent growing surveillance regarding the responsibility of maintaining the quality of these food products. The total or partial replacement by other than the species declared on the product label in meat, milk or derived products compromises the nature and quality of these products, hurting consumer choice rights, which may be based on medical and nutritional recommendations, the economic value of the product or habits and/or dietary restrictions of each specific culture. Species identification in dairy and meat products is important in food traceability. Although food matrices are complex and variable, biomolecular techniques are gradually being applied for species identification, having proven increasingly reliable, fast, specific and highly sensitive, even in mixed samples. For these reasons, this review intends to show the main molecular methods applied to adulteration detection in dairy and meat derivatives, including an already established method, such as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), as well as more advanced technologies, such as real-time PCR, next-generation DNA sequencing methods and DNA biochip or DNA microarray, which have been gradually applied to the detection and quantification of exogenous DNA in food samples, even if present in small amounts.

The current study was deliberated to evaluate safety and quality of small scale Tallaga cheese sold in Egyptian markets, as well as detecting its fraud. Fifty samples were examined chemically and microbiologically with special reference to fatty acid profile and presence of inhibitory substances. Results showed that the mean values of fat, T.S, moisture and fat/T.S % were 38.13, 47.17, 52.80 and 69.24 %, respectively. Samples from twelve small scale plants were examined for fatty acid profile, the majority of examined samples lack butyric fatty acid in their profile that characterizes milk fat. A high content of palmitic acid reached to 48% found in some market samples, others had a high percent of unsaturated fatty acids as compared to control treatments prepared in lab which indicated the skimming of milk fat with addition of vegetable oils. The ratio of n-6/n-3 in most examined samples (83.33%) exceeds the permitted limits. On detecting addition of inhibitory substance one sample was found to contain benzoate and other contains carbonate. Microbiological examination of samples revealed that mean values of total bacterial, yeast and mold counts were 70×107, 20×107 and 10×102 CFU/g, respectively. This study recommends application of restricted regulations on small factories, labeling of its products must be mandatory in order not to fraud consumers, as well as great attention must be paid for using fatty acid profile for detecting adulteration without depending only on determining fat%.