[Pesticide residues in foods ready for consumption]

The well proven Specht cleanup procedure was miniaturized as far as possible and combined with glass capillary gas chromatography using on-column injection and ECD and thermionic detection (dual column gas chromatograph). The analysis of more than 50 consumption ready foods showed that detection and determination of relevant organochlorine and organophosphorous pesticide residues will be nearly always possible even in the low concentration range to be expected (1 micrograms/kg and less). Exceptions are only those foods exhibiting interfering peaks from coextractives already in the uncooked form. Cooking, frying, baking etc. often reduces the interfering components effectively.