ABSTRACT
Adulteration in meat products is a widespread issue that could lead to serious threats to public health and religious violations. Technology that offers rapid, sensitive, accurate and reliable detection of meat species is the key to an effectual monitoring and control against meat adulteration. In recent years, high-throughput sequencing-based DNA metabarcoding technology has developed rapidly. With the characteristics of being high-throughput, highly precise and high-speed, this technology can simultaneously identify multiple species in complex samples, thus offering pronounced advantages in the surveillance of adulteration in meat and meat products. Starting with an introduction of the major developments in the high-throughput sequencing technology in the past two decades, this review provides an overview of the technical characteristics and research methods of DNA metabarcoding, summarizes the application of DNA metabarcoding technology in meat adulteration detection over the last few years, discusses the challenges of using DNA metabarcoding technology in the detection of meat adulteration, and provides future prospects on the development of this technology.