Liquid chromatographic determination of carbadox residues in animal feed

A liquid chromatographic (LC) method for determining residues of carbadox in the 0.01-10 ppm range in swine feed is described. Carbadox is extracted from ground feed with 25% acidified methanol-CHCl3, removed from emulsion-forming coextractables via an alumina column, separated from highly colored pigments by acid-base liquid-liquid partitioning, and finally isolated from interferences on a second alumina column. Isocratic reverse phase LC at 305 nm is used for quantitation. The average overall recovery at the 0.1, 0.5, and 1.0 ppm spike levels was 83.0% with a standard deviation of 2.04% and a coefficient of variation of 2.46%.