When discussing illegal additives in the feed, we immediately think of clenbuterol. Since the scandal of clenbuterol was exposed in 2011, the Chinese government has established a strict standard for the use of additives, and also tightened regulation for the illegal use of additives in feed. Nevertheless, some feed producers still have not stopped their illegal behavior. The “CCTV 3.15 party in 2017” exposed this situation and aroused great concern from the public. A reporter’s survey found the abuse of veterinary drugs including olaquindox, neomycin sulfate, sulfaquinoxaline, and dihdropyridine in animal breeding.
Olaquindox is an alternative to clenbuterol, that can promote growth, reduce the feed and meat ratio, improve body size, and improve feed intake. It tends to be accumulated in animal tissue and leads to chromosomal abnormalities in cells if added to animal feed over a long period of time. However, the residues of these compounds also pose a health risk to the consumers.
Currently, the determination of olaquindox in the Chinese national standard (GB)1 is mainly based on LC-UV and LC-MS/MS methods. Accurate quantification of Olaquindox is a challenge because of the complex matrices and potential to decompose during sample preparation and when exposed to light.
In this application note, a simple clean-up protocol using a novel SPE device was introduced for the analysis Olaquindox and six other illegal veterinary additives in animal feed. The extract was cleaned up by pass-through SPE using the Oasis PRiME HLB Cartridge prior to UPLC-MS/MS analysis. The spiked samples were quantified using an external standards method, and the recovery and reproducibility for each compound met the regulatory requirements of the quantitative method. This method is simple, rapid, accurate, suitable for the analysis of the highlighted veterinary drugs in animal feed.
