Veterinary drug residues control

An overview of the results of the Canadian Veterinary Drug residue control program during the fiscal years 1990/1991-1994/1995 shows that all meat and poultry commodities produced or imported during that period in Canada were totally free of violative residues of many veterinary drugs including chloramphenicol, benzimidazoles, nitrofurans, coccidiostats, zeranol, diethylstilbestrol and... 

Ellis RL, Development of veterinary drug residue controls by the Codex Alimentarius Commission A review. Food Addit. Contam. 2008 25 1432-1438. 

Source Neidert and Saschenbreker (1996). EuroResidue III Residues of Veterinary Drugs in Foods. Overview of the Canadian Drug Residue Control Program, 185-190. 

Neidert, E. and Saschenbrecker, P.W. (1996). Overview of the Canadian Drug Residue Control Program, in Haagsma, N. and Rviter, A., eds, Residues of Veterinary Drugs in Food. Proceedings of EuroResidue III Conference, Veldhoven, Netherlands, 6-8 May 1996, WPFC, Federation of European Chemical Societies, pp. 185-190. 

N. Haagsma, in Control of Veterinary Drug Residues in Meat, Thesis, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands (1988). 

This chapter will review the way in which veterinary pharmaceutical drugs are used and the controls placed on their use. It will also explain how information from veterinary drug residues surveillance programmes coupled with knowledge of the potential risk they pose can be used to assess the hazards they may present if allowed to enter the human food chain. 

The implementation of legislation in the UK has ensured more effective control over residues than has previously been possible. This will help to deter an isolated number of farmers who do not observe the recommended conditions of use for veterinary products and who are therefore probably responsible for the low number of residue violations recorded. Refinements in analytical methodology, to improve the speed and reliability of residue detection, will help assist the expansion of the UK veterinary drug residues surveillance programme. 

Food safety concerns were also addressed via IPC. Many veterinary drugs were controlled in a broad range of food matrices. For example, a specific IPC strategy was developed for routine determination of the marker residues of oxytetracycline in edible animal tissues [36]. Dihydrostreptomycin is an aminoglycoside antibiotic used in veterinary medicine in combination with benzylpenicillin to treat bacterial infections in cattle, pigs and sheep its IPC quantitative determination in bovine tissues and milk was developed and optimized [37,38]. 

It is essential that FF-RMs are as similar as possible to the real samples as also holds true for other CRMs, e.g. environmental samples [7], This is often not possible due to very complex and delicate food and feed matrices especially as CRMs must show stability over a certain range of time. In food safety and quality, CRMs play an important role in the analysis of e.g. food microbial contamination, food contaminants such as mycotoxins, dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and food residues such as veterinary drug residues (hormones, antibiotics) and pesticides. CRMs for food quality control are important for analysis of food constituents such as fat, sugar and protein content or of typical indicators for the food origin (e.g. stable isotopes in wine). In addition, FF-RMs are used in proficiency testing, although most of this testing is done with non-certified assay materials (PTMs). 

Different approaches to legal requirements on validation of test methods for official control of foodstuffs and of veterinary drug residues and element contaminants in the EC... 

Key words Laboratories for offical control of foodstuffs, veterinary drug residues and element contaminants Validation of test methods Legal requirements... 

Validation criteria referring to official laboratories on the control of veterinary drug residues are included in the following Commission Decisions ... 

Chemical contaminants in food, from pesticides and veterinary drug residues to contamination from food packaging, are a major concern of the food industry. Written by a distinguished international team of contributors, this authoritative collection describes the main chemical contaminants, their health implications, how they contaminate food products, methods for their detection, and how such contaminants can be controlled. 

Codex Alimentarius Commission, CAC/GL 16-1993, Codex Guidelines for the Establishment of a Regulatory Programme for Control of Veterinary Drug Residues in Foods, Rome, 1993. 

Another source of concern in food safety control is the increasing amounts of residues of veterinary drugs that can be found in foods. These drugs are mostly antibiotics of different structures, such as tetracyclines, macrolides, quinolones, sulphona-mides, and 6-lactams. The preferred analytical technique for antibiotic residue determination is HPLC, and specific methods for each family of antibiotics can be fovmd in the scientific literature. Most of the published methods use RP columns with gradient elution. Every available detection method can be used, depending on the application, though MS is a powerful technique for the identification and confirmation of veterinary drug residues in food samples, and at the moment, LC-MS is the method of reference. 

In terms of food quality, veterinary drugs are considered extraneous, contaminating substances whose presence is undesirable, although often inevitable. In this context, these substances are classified in the same group as environmental contaminants, such as mycotoxins, pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Like other types of contaminants, residues of veterinary drugs in foods present a potential health risk to the consumer. Therefore, the incidence and levels of veterinary drug residues in tissues have to be effectively and consistently controlled. 

Fish farming enables greater control of product quality, but there have been concerns about the levels of contaminants found in farmed products. Their sensory and nutritional quality can also not equal that of wild-caught fish. This important collection reviews potential negative safety and quality issues in farmed fish and presents methods to improve product characteristics. The first part of the book discusses contaminants, such as persistent organic pollutants and veterinary drug residues and methods for their reduction and control. The second part addresses important quahty issues, such as genetic control of flesh characteristics and the effects of feed on product nutritional and sensory quality. 

Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are widely used in veterinary practice and are, therefore, of growing interest to the residue control of animal-derived food. Veterinarians are seeing an increased use of anti-inflammatory agents, administered with or without antibiotics, for treatment of mastitis because of the increase in efficiency of these agents over antibiotics alone. 

Routine or field laboratories involved in the ANP are controlled in each Member State by at least one National Reference Laboratory (NRL) designated by the National Government (51, 52). National Laboratories are in turn responsible for the standards maintained in any other laboratories in their own country that are involved in the National Sampling Plan program. National Reference laboratories coordinate standards and methods of analysis for each group of residues, and may undertake work on all or limited classes of the veterinary drug areas listed in Directive 86/469/EEC. 

In 1991, a survey of the swine sector in Italy noted a relatively high contamination of feedstuffs with veterinary drugs. The contamination concerned more than two-thirds of the controlled industrial animal feed producers (21). Not declared drugs, principally carbadox, olaquindox, and sulfamethazine, were found in 29 of 193 feed samples (15%) collected from 10 different feed producers. For some of these feeds, the relatively high drug levels could caused appearance of residues in the urine of the live swine and further in the offal taken from slaughterhouses. Positive findings in both urine and offal accounted for 10 of the 520 samples analyzed. 

For food safety purposes the overriding aim is that food contamination should be reduced to the lowest practicable level, bearing in mind the potential costs and benefits involved. Since it is difficult to establish cause and effect relationships following long-term (chronic) exposure at low concentrations, it may be necessary to base action on prudence rather than on proven harm to health. However, if this approach is to maintain the confidence of both consumers and producers of food, a rational evaluation of all relevant information is required so that the balance between the risks and benefits of veterinary drugs can be assessed. Information on the incidence of potentially harmful drug residues is fundamental to this cost-benefit analysis so too is the consumption of the commodities involved (particularly for susceptible consumers or those consumers who eat more). Account must also be taken of the potential fall in food production if a drug is controlled or prohibited, and also the animal health and welfare implications that may result from the restriction of an animal medicine for which there may be no effective alternative. 

Category 2 materials include animal byproducts presenting a risk of contamination with other animal diseases, e.g., dead stock or animals killed in the context of disease control measures or where there is risk of residues of veterinary drugs. Products produced from these tissues may be recycled for... 

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