New method detects traces of veterinary drugs in baby food

Do veterinary drugs end up in our food? To find out, researchers from the University of Almería (Spain) have developed a new system to analyze food substances quickly and precisely. The team developed a "multi-residue" method, which allows several drugs to be detected at a time, in very small quantities, in food. First, chromatographic techniques are used for this, in order to separate compounds, and mass spectrometry to identify them. The "precise, simple and fast" methodology has been validated by analyzing baby food -- twelve meat products (cow, pig or poultry) and nine milk powder samples. Data indicate that concentrations of veterinary drugs vary from 0.5 to 25.2 µg/kg in the former and 1.2 to 26.2 µg/kg in the latter "although with more samples, more conclusive results would be obtained,” according to the authors.