DETECTION OF ANIMAL FATS IN BUTTER BY DIFFERENTIAL SCANNING CALORIMETRY - A PILOT-STUDY

Because of its high price, butter has always been the object of adulte ration by addition of less expensive vegetable or animal fats. Althoug h a number of methods have been proposed for the detection of butterfa t adulteration, none has found widespread use. For this reason, a stud y was con ducted to assess the use of differential scanning calorimetr y (DSC) for detecting the presence of added animal fat, i.e., chicken fat, in butter. The results obtained show that DSC is an efficient met hod for characterizing pure animal fats as well as their mixtures. Fur thermore, the accuracy with which data are obtained, in combination wi th the sensitivity of DSC to subtle changes in chemical composition of the sample, makes DSC an attractive possibility for development as a quality control procedure.