Development and evaluation of a lateral flow immunochromatographic assay for the rapid detection of donkey meat in beef as a tool for meat adulteration identification

Food authenticity is a global issue and has caused growing concerns in recent decades. Immunochromatography-based methods are more favored over conventional sophisticated techniques for species identification and meat fraud detection. There is a growing need for an on-spot, minimally pre- processing detection tool for identifying donkey meat in beef within the routine meat inspection procedures by the food safety and quality inspectors during daily consumer meat purchases. The newly developed kit has a limit of detection as low as 10% donkey meat in beef meat and detects 1% (w/w%) of donkey meat with reduced visualization intensity, demonstrating the assay’s stability under different adulteration conditions. The kit was validated using 26 meat samples from different butcher shops in the Greater Cairo Area of Egypt, and compared with PCR analysis. Both methods confirmed that 4 samples (15.4%) were adulterated with donkey meat. The sensitivity of the developed lateral flow kit test reached 100%. This study introduces a powerful, rapid tool for detecting donkey meat adulteration in beef within 2 min, offering promising potential for real-world applications.