The development of a method for chloramphenicol determination in meat products

This paper presents the findings of a study on the development of a method for chloramphenicol determination in meat products using liquid chromatography-mass selective detection (LC/MSD). The study determined optimum conditions for chloramphenicol analysis using an Agilent 1200 liquid chromatograph and an Agilent Technologies 6460 triple quadrupole liquid chromatograph/mass spectrometer. The conditions for an efficient extraction of chloramphenicol from meat samples were investigated. The optimum technique was found to be liquid extraction with ethyl acetate followed by further purification with hexane. The values of recovery were in the range of 70 to 100% in the matrix, depending on the levels of chloramphenicol in the meat products. The metrological characteristics of the developed method were evaluated and the values of the following parameters were calculated: the deviation between the mean value and the actual value, which is the measure of accuracy, did not exceed 26%, reproducibility was at most 10% and repeatability was no more than 5%.The analysis of meat product samples carried out using the developed method found that 17.6% of the samples contained the antibiotic.