Possibilities of different animal milk detection in milk and dairy products - a review

Adulteration of milk and dairy products with different types of milk, other than declared, presents a big problem for food monitoring. The evidence of milk adulteration is a difficult task considering similar compositions of various types of milk. The presented review is therefore focused on the study of the composition of milk from different animal species. The aim is to find a useful marker component for the adulterant detection. The analysis of milk proteins is a suitable solution of this problem. The techniques used for research in this area were also studied. As prospective techniques, immunological techniques and techniques based on DNA analysis are especially considered. The first ones are able to determine 0.5% of different milk adulterant, and the second ones even as little as 0.1%. Reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography is successfully applied in the quantitative analysis of individual milk adulterants in samples. The most frequent adulteration of ewe and goat milk is its replacement with less expensive and more plentiful bovine milk. Not so typical adulteration is the presence of goat milk in ewe milk or the detection of bovine milk as adulterant in buffalo mozzarella cheese.