Analysis of GMO contents as a component in risk-oriented surveillance over food products safety

Control over use of genetically modified products is a vital task within a risk-oriented model for surveillance over food safety products all over the world including the Russian Federation. Our research goal was to examine domestically manufactured food products in order to determine whether they contained certain regulatory sequences typical for genetically modified organisms. We applied polymerase chain reaction with hybridization-fluorescent detection in real time mode to examine 77 food products samples; the task was to determine whether they contained DNA enhancer (E-35S) and promoter (P-35S) of S35 sequence belonging to cauliflower mosaic virus, terminator of nopaline synthase gene from Agrobacterium tumefaciens (T-NOS), 35S enhancer (E-FMV) and promoter (P-FMV) of Figwort mosaic virus, as well as vegetable DNA inducing soya DNA. When analyzing the extracted DNA, we didn’t detect transgenic elements in any samples; however, there were vegetable components reveled in them including 68.8 % samples with soya DNA. We established that some sausages were falsified as they contained vegetable elements. In 15.6 % cases data on a product structure turned out to be false because soya DNA was not listed on consumer package. Our research on determining soya DNA and transgenic elements in food products indicates that soya ingredients have been added into food products in spite of their absence in relevant documents as recipe components. All the obtained results taken into account, we assume it is necessary to improve control procedures for detecting genetically modified and vegetable components used as ingredients in food products as their falsification can make for changes not only in their consumer properties but also damage consumers’ health.