The Feasibility of Artificial Intelligence and Raman Spectroscopy for Determining the Authenticity of Minced Meat

Food fraud in meat products presents serious economic and public health challenges, underscoring the need for rapid and reliable detection methods. This study investigates the potential of Raman spectroscopy combined with machine learning to accurately discriminate between pure and mixed minced meat preparations. We evaluated three classification algorithms: Support Vector Machines (SVMs), Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), and Random Forests (RFs). Raman spectra were collected from 19 distinct samples consisting of different ratios of pork, beef, and lamb minced meat. Our findings suggest that homogenization markedly enhances spectral consistency and classification accuracy. In the pure meat samples case, all three models (SVM, ANN, and RF) achieved notable increases in classification accuracies (from 0.50–0.70 to above 0.85), a dramatic improvement over unhomogenized samples. In more complex homogenized mixtures, SVM delivered the highest performance, achieving an accuracy of up to 0.88 for 50:50 mixtures and 0.86 for multi-ratio samples, often outperforming both ANN and RF. While the underlying interpretation of the classification models remains complex, the findings consistently underscore the critical role of homogenization on model performance. This work demonstrates the robust potential of the Raman spectroscopy-coupled machine learning approach for the rapid and accurate identification of minced meat species.