Quality control in the food industries with DNA technologies.

: An important part of quality control in the food industry are tests to determine the origin of materials used in processed products. Because of the stability of DNA, tests which make use of DNA in the product can be used to authenticate the species used in meat pies, tinned fish and even the variety of oats used in porridge. Tests based on hybridization, sequencing of oligonucleotides and amplification of DNA are likely to find increasing application with the only inhibition being the unpredictable nature of the market which makes commercial development difficult.