Proteomic Authentication of Dairy Products

Milk and other dairy products are the main source of protein in human diet, which are usually complex compounds comprising proteins and its derivatives. Proteomic practices enable simultaneous analysis of several hundreds to thousands of proteins. Consumers have right to recognize what type of nutrients they are ingesting from dairy products. Several instrumental procedures have been recommended for dairy food authentication. However, many protein molecules have been proposed as biomarkers for various characteristics of dairy products. Even protein biomarkers specify procedures to which milk and milk products have been subjected. They can also provide further confirmation about foods marking claim. The manipulation of proteomic approaches for quality assessment and quality control in food production, optimization as well as for the enhancement of new assembly processes has become a vital tool for the wide range of industries and quality monitoring units. Newly developed and selective approaches for food sample formulation followed by sensitive mass spectrometric method to recognize proteins with less abundance provide deep insight for all adulteration aspects and origin of dairy items. These novel and modern approaches help to identify variants in the production method and to find molecular markers for dairy food quality measures. This chapter offers a critical and comprehensive overview of the relevance of proteomic methods to identify authenticity of the dairy products, safety and quality research module updating the functioning and present limitations of applied systems in industrial environments and laboratory level.