Amid alarm over beef consumption, Gujarat has found a new weapon in its arsenal to check for beef in meat stocks.
The state can now use a rapid test using the LAMP DNA method, in limited capacity in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar, which claims to be able to confirm the presence of beef in seized stock of meat.
According to The Times of India's report, which quoted experts, this method will provide results within an hour compared to conventional methods like serological analysis and DNA analysis which may take more than a day to produce conclusive results.
Senior faculty at National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU), Nikunj Brahmbhatt, who completed his doctoral thesis 'Development of Loop-mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP) for forensic investigation of closed inter-species animals' in 2020 from Kadi Sarva Vishwavidyalaya in Gujarat, told TOI that the LAMP DNA method can be used to identify beef even in smaller or cooked meat samples.
While serological or protein-based identification is the most commonly used method for testing meat samples in the state, the results of DNA method are more precise, Brahmbhatt said. The method is said to be effective in detecting beef even from seized samples that may have more than one type of meat.
He further added that conventional methods may sometimes affect identification when the meat has been exposed to heat for long or is analysed after a prolonged period of time.
Brahmbhatt also said that to his knowledge, no other state has currently employed this method.
Officials told the publication that the new method needs standardisation based on field inputs and can be employed at a larger scale following that.