Are low-cost, hand-held NIR sensors suitableto detect adulterations of halal meat?

The demand of halal meat products is growing globally.
Therefore, it is important to detect adulterations and food
fraud attempts in a fast, non-invasive manner for example by using
hand-held near-infrared (NIR) devices. In this study, samples
of pork, lamb, beef and chicken were measured pure and in mixtures
of 2, 5, 10, 25 and 50% pork in the non-pork meat samples,
respectively. Five sensors were tested with varying wavelength
range: Scio (740-1070 nm), Linksquare (400-1000 nm), Tellspec
(900-1700 nm), MicroNIR (900-1650 nm), ASD Labspec 4 High-
Res (350-1700 nm). A one-class-classification approach was used
for data analysis, applying pork as the target group. For comparison,
thresholds of the models were chosen to correctly identify
100% of the pork samples and 75% of all mixtures. Comparing
the sensors upon the correct detection of all halal meat samples,
i.e., no-pork containing ones, the Scio and the ASD Labspec performed
best with an outcome of 34% and 32%, respectively. The
Linksquare, MicroNIR and Tellspec were able to correctly identify
27%, 27%, and 10%, respectively, of the halal products. Concluding,
the application of these five NIR devices are challenging
when it comes to the detection of meat products from different
species. Nonetheless, the usage of this application in combination
with suitable chemometric approaches may contribute to the
detection of food fraud in halal products.