Detecção da adulteração fraudulenta de carne bovina moída através de técnicas histopatológicas

Abstract

This paper reports the detection of fraud by adulterating minced meat through microscopic morphological evaluation of tissues using routine histological techniques. Two packages of frozen minced meat under suspicion of fraud were sent to the Animal Pathology Laboratory of the Federal University of Uberlândia. The meats were thawed at a temperature between 3 ° C and 7 ° C for 24 hours, then eighteen samples were collected from each package. For comparative analysis, freshly minced meat of the highest quality and second quality were purchased. The samples were fixed in 10% buffered formalin, included in paraffin and stained with Hematoxylin and Eosin (HE) and Masson's Trichrome (TM). The slides stained with HE were analyzed for the presence of normal components of the musculature and other tissues. The slides stained with TM were analyzed to estimate the percentage of muscle, connective and adipose tissue. These proportions were subjected to analysis of variance followed by the Tukey test for multiple comparisons (P <0.05) or the Kruskal-Wallis test followed by the Dunn test for multiple comparisons (P <0.05). In the analysis of the slides stained with HE, eighteen samples suspected of fraud presented histological components foreign to the composition of minced meat: aggregates of amorphous basophilic material and glandular tissue. In the analysis of slides stained with TM, the samples of adulterated minced meat had percentages of connective and adipose tissue similar to that of unadulterated meat. However, the proportion of muscle tissue was significantly lower in samples of adulterated meat. Histology proved to be an efficient method for the detection of contaminants in minced meat. Special histological stains are also useful tools to help attest to their quality. It is necessary to adapt and standardize the histological processing for samples of meat products, in order to obtain histological sections of good quality.