Prepared by the Labelfish Consortium
Abstract: The Labelfish project is an EU InterReg funded network of laboratories in the “Atlantic Area” of Europe, aiming to develop harmonised & standardise methods for the authentication of seafood products.
The purpose of this SOP is to provide a genetic method for the identification of fish species, in order to support the implementation of food labelling/authenticity testing.
This method is suitable for the qualitative identification of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) in fish products. It has been tested against a very broad taxonomic range of fish species (but has failed in a small minority of cases, <5% of species tested; Ivanova et al., 2007). The assay is designed to work with fresh, smoked, salted and frozen samples. It is also successful with cooked products, but success is dependent on the intensity of cooking. It is not suitable for highly processed foods e.g. tins of tuna. It is also unsuitable for the identification of complex fish products containing DNA from multiple species. For some species of relatively recent evolutionary origin, this method may only be able to identify the sample down to the genus level (e.g. some tunas of the genus Thunnus, or redfish of the Sebaste