DNA fingerprinting helped revolutionize crime fighting. Now, the technology is poised to forever change how food is traced.
Maple Leaf Foods is working on a project that would use DNA “fingerprinting” to trace pork products from store shelves back to the farm.
The major Canadian food processor sees it as the next step in giving consumers more assurance of safe foods, while giving its pork products a competitive edge in domestic and foreign markets.
The company plans to gather DNA information on breeding stock of hog farms that supply animals to Maple Leaf. The information would be stored in a computer and updated each time a participating hog operation added new breeding stock to its barns.
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With that information, the ability to trace a pork product back to the farm of origin would be almost immediate, said Michael Detlefsen, an executive vice-president for Maple Leaf Foods.
“If there was, say, a tenderloin in Japan or China or Australia, you’d be able to take a piece of that, look at the DNA, tie it in through your computer system in Canada and say, ‘Yes, this tenderloin came from this farm.’ “
The technology was developed by Pyxis Genomics Canada, based in Saskatoon.
The company is working to identify genes that could be used in the program. It’s expected that 200-300 genes would be enough for the fingerprinting.
Maple Leaf wants to test the traceability program through one its plants within two years. The company’s plant in Lethbridge is a likely possibility, said Detlefsen, because it processes pork for Japan, where there’s increasing interest in food safety and quality assurances.
“Based on all of our research, we believe this is the best technology we could find,” Detlefsen said. “That said, we are still testing it.”
A DNA traceability program could offer several advantages.
It would allow the company to quickly and easily trace the history of the product back through the food production chain.
It could also be beneficial in the event of a disease outbreak in Canada’s hog herd. It could pinpoint where the disease originated, which would support efforts to zone a region of Canada while allowing pork exports to continue from other regions.
It would assure customers that the pork they buy came from hog operations that follow accepted standards of production. For example, said Detlefsen, Japanese buyers often prefer pork produced from pigs fed a certain amount of barley.
The program could give those customers a way to audit how their pork is produced, in terms of feed and other production practices, such as medications used in hog production.
The ability to link the customer to the farm should give Canadian pork an edge, Detlefsen said.
Lawrence Schook, president and chief scientific officer for Pyxis Genomics Canada, said blood testing is standard practice for producers who bring new breeding stock to their farms, so DNA fingerprinting should not be an extra burden.
Schook said his company has also had discussions within the cattle industry about using the system.
The traceability program for Maple Leaf is still being developed, so the company has not set a date when it wants hogs arriving at its processing plants to be covered by the program.
