Bovine milk powder adulteration with vegetable oils or fats revealed by MALDI-QTOF MS

Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionisation-quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-QTOF MS) allowed detection of bovine milk powder adulteration with vegetable oils or fats with high speed and reliability, requiring little sample preparation (n-hexane extraction) and no prior separation procedures. This technique was also able to identify the adulterated employed in this fraud. Hydrogenated soybean oil addition in bovine milk powder sample generate a similar TAG profile to that observed on adulterated milk samples apprehended by the Brazilian Federal Police. In this sense, a robust method for high throughput forensic screening of milk powder adulteration by exogenous oils and fats is showed.