Abstract: Beef has become one of the important components of consumers' diets due to its high nutritional value. In recent years, the problem of beef adulteration has been coming. With the development of analytical techniques, mass spectrometry, enzyme-linked immunoassay, genetic, sensor and spectroscopic techniques has been used to identify adulterated beef. Mass spectrometry has highly accurate and is used to identify beef after deep processing or similar species beef, but the equipment is expensive. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays has low cost and high specific and are used to identify the meat species, however, the results are prone to false positive when identifying similar species. Gene chip technology can be used to test beef samples fast and large-scale, but there has problems with standardization of gene chip. Sensor technology has been used to beef identification, and needs to be combined with other technologies because the detection precision is low. The spectroscopy technique is fast to detect, but requires complex data support. In conclusion, this paper analyzes the principles, advantages and disadvantages of beef adulteration identification technology, which is expected to provide reference for the development of beef adulteration identification technology.