Veterinary drugs residues: a review of the latest analytical research on sample preparation and LC-MS based methods

The world population is increasing and there is a growing demand for food, leading to intensification of farming methods and a requirement for more coadjuvants. Potential high profits sometimes lead to fraudulent use of drugs and pesticides. Veterinary drugs in particular can pose a real risk to human health if their residues are allowed to enter the food chain. Parent drugs and their metabolites can occur in foodstuffs individually or as multicomponent mixtures with enhanced adverse effects. In order to protect consumer safety, the European Union has established lists of forbidden substances, maximum residue limits for authorised drugs and precise criteria for confirmation analyses and interpretation of the results. Due to their nature and potential danger, the 'best available technique' should always be applied. Following this principle, this review examines the procedures and techniques applied to monitoring pharmaceutical products of major concern (e.g. anthelmintics, NSAIDs, corticosteroids, coccidiostats) in foods of animal origin, discussing advances over the past five years and future trends in the field of food safety. Our goal was both to focus attention on this important topic and to provide a selection of the most relevant recent papers on drug residues in foodstuffs.