From Clive Keenan
In his article on tests to identify “fake” food (Technology, 1 October 1994), Paul Rodgers says: “Unfortunately, neither the protein test nor the antigen test works if the food has been cooked or tinned. The processing breaks down proteins and antigens, making it impossible to distinguish species.”
This may be the case for canned fish, but it is not the case for cooked fish. In our 1985 paper, “Electrophoretic identification of raw and cooked fish fillets and other marine products” published in Food Technology in Australia (vol 37), J. Shaklee and I clearly demonstrate that there is a heat stable class of protein (parvalbumins) that can be used to identify many species of fish. This comes as quite a surprise to many people.
