Determination of 24 antibiotics at trace levels in animal feed by high performance liquid chromatography : tandem mass spectrometry (LC- MS/MS) : validation report

The Directorate General for Food and Health (DG SANTE) of the European Commission has requested support from the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission for the provision of methods of analysis for the twenty-four antimicrobial active substances in feed at cross-contamination level. The availability of suitable and reliable analytical methods is critical for facilitating the implementation and monitoring the efficiency of the Measures against Antimicrobial Resistance taken by the European Commission. This report presents three analytical methods developed and validated at the JRC, able to detect traces of all the twenty-four antibiotics belonging to eleven chemical classes in compound feeds. The established performance characteristics demonstrate the fitness for purpose of these three methods for the determination of the twenty-four antibiotics in five different types of compound feed (swine, rabbit, bovine, ovine, and poultry compound feeds). These methods prove to be effective at levels as low as achievable using common High Performance Liquid Chromatography coupled to Tandem Mass Spectrometry,routinely available in official control laboratories for feed analysis. These findings are used by DG SANTE as one of the criteria to set maximum acceptable levels for cross-contamination for the twenty-four antibiotics listed in the Annex of Regulation (EU) 2019/4.