Dioxin Screening in Food and Feed

Keywords food safety POPs PCDDs PCDFs dl-PCBs official control EU regulations triple quadmpole GC-MS/MS GC-HRMS ion ratio confirmation 

The monitoring of food and feed stufffor the presence of polychlorinated dibenzo-/r-dioxins (PCDDs), polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) and the dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls (dl-PCBs) can be performed with screening and confirmatory methods. 

For the clean-up and fractionation as well as the chromatographic separation of isomers the same requirements apply for screening and confirmation. 

Due to the high performance of modern triple quadrupole mass spectrometers for PCDD/PCDF and dl-PCB analysis (Kotz et al., 2012) further amendments of the criteria for confirmatory methods for inclusion of MS/MS (tandem mass spectrometry) have been set in effect with the European Commission Regulation No 709/2014 of 20 June 2014. Technical progress and developments have shown that the use of gas chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) should be allowed for use as a confirmatory method for checking compliance with the 

For GC-MS/MS analysis the same GC conditions with PTV injection are used as they are standard for GC-HRMS measurements. 

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Dioxin Screening in Food and Feed 695 Table 4.46 SRM transitions for PCBs and labelled internal standards. 

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