Determination of veterinary drugs in food (nitroimidazoles in lyophilized pork muscle)

The determination of veterinary drugs and their residues in meat and meat products is regulated by several EU regulations. Nitroimidazole group of compounds, specifically, metronidazole and ronidazole are prohibited. To be able to protect consumers, fast and reliable extraction and detection methods are needed.

Using the pressurized solvent extraction technique (SpeedExtractor E-916) the recoveries of metronidazole and ronidazole were between 70 and 85%, achieving very short extraction time of 35 minutes. Recoveries of the spiked samples, directly before the analysis showed similar performance. Extraction procedure was thus reasonable effective and fast enough to enable effective food samples control.