Detect banned substances in imported seafood

Thermo Fisher Scientific has developed three food testing methods in response to concerns over contamination of imported seafood. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has banned the import of certain fish species from China because of possible contamination with drugs and unsafe food additives - including nitrofuran, malachite green and chloramphenicol - which are prohibited in food products for human consumption. The ban has stimulated significant interest in the development of analytical methods for detecting trace levels of these substances in food.

Thermo Fisher has developed three methods utilising the TSQ Quantum family of triple quadrupole mass spectrometers with highly selective reaction monitoring (H-SRM), enabling the trace-level analysis of complex samples such as animal tissue.

The methods are available to download on www.thermo.com/appnotes.

Thermo Fisher has developed a sensitive and reliable liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method using H-SRM and the TSQ Quantum Discovery Max triple quadrupole mass spectrometer for the detection of nitrofuran metabolites, which are veterinary antibiotics banned in many countries because of health concerns for humans. The method demonstrates a limit of quantitation (LOQ) as low as <0.05 µg/kg in fortified crawfish meat for all four nitrofuran metabolites.

A triphenylmethane dye used as a fungicide in aquaculture, malachite green and its metabolite leucomalachite green have demonstrated putative carcinogenic activity and have been banned by both the FDA and the EU. Thermo Fisher's LC-MS/MS method detected both contaminants in roasted eel meat using the TSQ Quantum Discovery Max triple quadrupole mass spectrometer.

Government agencies around the world have prohibited the use of chloramphenicol for the treatment of animals producing food products for human consumption because the antibiotic can potentially cause a lethal condition called aplastic anemia in humans. Thermo Fisher has developed an LC-MS/MS method for chloramphenicol on the TSQ Quantum Discovery that yields subpicogram limits of quantitation, which translates to sub-parts-per-billion sample concentrations.