Method for confirming the identity of a product by means of a microbial dna tag

A product comprising:

• a material selected for commercial distribution;
• and
• a taggant incorporated into the material, the taggant comprising a killed food-compatible microorganism having a substantially intact cell wall and comprising one or more target nucleotide sequences,
• wherein the killed food-compatible microorganism is non-viable and detectable by nucleic acid amplification;
• and comprises a nucleic acid sequence that is uniquely associated with lot-level and/or provenance information for said product and stored in non-transitory computer memory;
• and
• wherein said one or more target nucleic acid sequences are not otherwise present in said product.

A provenance or lot-level identification system, comprising:

• A) a plurality of taggants, each taggant comprising a killed food-compatible microorganism having a substantially intact cell wall and comprising one or more target nucleotide sequences configured for incorporation into products;
• B) a digital storage means for storing provenance or lot-level identification associations between the target nucleotide sequences of each taggant sequence and corresponding provenance or lot-level identification information for a product;
• C) a detection module configured to receive a product sample and identify a target nucleotide sequence by nucleic acid amplification and sequence analysis;
• and
• D) a processor configured to compare the identified target nucleotide sequence with stored associations in the digital storage means and output the corresponding provenance or lot-level identification information.

A computer-implemented method for provenance or lot-level identification, comprising:

• A) receiving sequence data derived from a product sample, the sequence data corresponding to one or more target nucleotide sequences associated with a taggant comprising a killed food-compatible microorganism having a substantially intact cell wall;
• B) comparing the received sequence data with stored target nucleotide sequences in a digital registry;
• C) identifying a matching stored target nucleotide sequence;
• and
• D) returning provenance or lot-level identification information associated with the matching stored target nucleotide sequence.