THE BREED TRACEABILITY OF SHEEP MEAT BY USING MOLECULAR GENETICS METHODS: PRELIMINARY RESULTS

Safety and quality foods of animal origin are extremely important for consumers. The aim of this work was to evaluate the feasibility of a method to track the breed origin of sheep meat all along the production chain using molecular genetics tools. A total of 800 samples evenly distributed among seven Italian sheep breeds have been typed at 19 STR markers, together with 90 samples from both imported sheep animals and local crossbred animals withdrawn at slaughterhouses. A maximum likelihood assignment test was adopted to evaluate STR ability to allocate samples to their true breed of origin. Sarda animals were all correctly allocated, as well as more than 98% of samples from the other breeds. Only slightly worst allocation performances were observed for imported and crossbred animals. Preliminary results seem quite promising, though further analyses will be needed in order to better understand the statistical power of such an assignment test before implementation in the sheep meat production chain.