Where is the game? Wild meat products authentication in South Africa: a case study

Abstract

Wild animals’ meat is extensively consumed in South Africa, being obtained either from ranching, farming or hunting. To test the authenticity of the commercial labels of meat products in the local market, we obtained DNA sequence information from 146 samples (14 beef and 132 game labels) for barcoding cytochrome c oxidase subunit I and partial cytochrome b and mitochondrial fragments. The reliability of species assignments were evaluated using BLAST searches in GenBank, maximum likelihood phylogenetic analysis and the characterbased method implemented in BLOG. The Kimura-2-parameter intra- and interspecific variation was evaluated for all matched species