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Proteomics is a key analytical method in meat research thanks to its potential in investigating the proteins at interplay in post-mortem muscles. This study aimed to characterize for the first time the differences in early post-mortem muscle proteomes of chickens raised under two farming systems: organic versus antibiotic-free. Forty post-mortem Pectoralis major muscle samples from two chicken strains (Ross 308 versus Ranger Classic) reared under organic versus antibiotic-free farming systems were characterized and compared using two-dimensional electrophoresis and LC-MS/MS mass spectrometry. Within antibiotic-free and organic farming systems, 14 and 16 proteins were differentially abundant between Ross 308 and Ranger Classic, respectively. Within Ross 308 and Ranger Classic chicken strains, 12 and 18 proteins were differentially abundant between organic and antibiotic-free, respectively. Bioinformatics was applied to investigate the molecular pathways at interplay, which highlighted the key role of muscle structure and energy metabolism. Antibiotic-free and organic farming systems were found to significantly impact the muscle proteome of chicken breast meat. This paper further proposes a primary list of putative protein biomarkers that can be used for chicken meat or farming system authenticity.

The performance of visible-near infrared hyperspectral imaging (Vis-NIR-HSI) (400–1000 nm) and shortwave infrared hyperspectral imaging (SWIR-HSI) (1116–1670 nm) combined with different classification and regression (linear and non-linear) multivariate methods were assessed for meat authentication. In Vis-NIR-HSI, total accuracies in the prediction set for SVM and ANN-BPN (the best classification models) were 96 and 94 % surpassing the performance of SWIR-HSI with 88 and 89 % accuracy, respectively. In Vis-NIR-HSI, the best-obtained coefficient of determinations for the prediction set (R2p) were 0.99, 0.88, and 0.99 with root mean square error in prediction (RMSEP) of 9, 24 and 4 (%w/w) for pork in beef, pork in lamb and pork in chicken, respectively. In SWIR-HSI, the best-obtained R2p were 0.86, 0.77, and 0.89 with RMSEP of 16, 23 and 15 (%w/w) for pork in beef, pork in lamb and pork in chicken, respectively. The results ascertain that Vis-NIR-HSI coupled with multivariate data analysis has better performance rather than SWIR-HIS.

In recent years, consumer interest in meat authenticity has increased. Fraudulent claims are most likely to be regarding meat origin, meat substitution, meat processing treatment, and non-meat ingredient additions. This study focuses on the substitution of meat species in processed kebab-like food sales in Poland. The growing popularity of kebab-like foods and the limited number of official inspections of this type of food make this topic interesting. In this study, the results reveal that 60% of the foods analyzed contain an undeclared ingredient or the substitution of an expensive ingredient with a cheaper option.