Is your meat really what it says it is?

Today we learned about Genetics - more like a crash course in what DNA is and how it works.

We later did a workshop where we bought 6 different meats, from cured prosciutto to cat food, to test if it is actually the meat it says it is.

Meat we bought:

• K - Kroket from FEBO
• P - ‘Pate’ but actually cat food (Beef flavour)
• G - ‘Gehakt Galletjes’ (meat balls)
• F - Kip Fillet (chicken)
• S - Frikadel from FEBO
• H - Ham

Together we first isolated the DNA from the small samples we cut from the meat - this was called ‘dirty DNA extraction’ and then followed a very strict and sterile protocol to get the samples ready for the PCR machine. We had to make up a ‘Master Mix’, which contains all the primers : it had goat; chicken; cattle; sheep; pig; horse , this will enable us to have something to match the gel bands to. We left the ThermoCycler running over night as it takes time, this is due to the high and low temp changes which splits and copies the selected DNA.