β-Adrenergic agonists are synthetic phenylethanolamine compounds used as bronchodilators and tocolytic agents. While these compounds have medicinal uses in the veterinary field, they are often misused as growth promoters in cattle, swine and other farm animals. In many countries, including European Union countries and China, these drugs have been banned due to their adverse effects on humans, such as food poisoning, cardiovascular and central nervous system diseases. Regulations have either not set a maximum residue limit or have a zero-tolerance level for these compounds. Consequently, highly sensitive analyses are essential to support the enforcement of laws and regulations focusing on the detection and identification of these residues in animals via their biological matrices, animal products, feed and drinking water. Of all these samples, meat is a main source of consume...

Automation Used: Gerstel The conventional analysis of pesticides in food products that are high in fat content is labor intensive and time consuming. The high concentration of fatty acids from extracts of these samples greatly interferes with chromatographic analysis. This study explores the use of dispersive pipette extraction technology for removing fatty acids and water from acetonitrile extracts of food samples. The sorbent used for the QuEChERS method is primary secondary amine, (PSA). XTR tips are compatible with automated liquid handlers making extractions easy to automate, and additional centrifugation steps are unnecessary. XTR tips contain loose or “dispersive” sorbent that is filtered to ensure solutions are free from particulate material. Although the PSA used in QuEChERS products are effective for fatty acid removal from fruit and ...

Highly reproducible results with reduced sample preparation time The analysis of pesticides in fruit and vegetables is very important in the field of food safety. To ensure levels of toxic pesticides are below tolerance levels and are safe to ingest, routine and comprehensive testing must be performed. The QuEChERS (quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe) method is used to remove fatty acid components rather than to extract and isolate the pesticides. The advantage of this method is that it is comprehensive, providing very high recoveries for almost all pesticides. The disadvantage of this method is that the resultant sample solutions are relatively “dirty”, and as a result there have been numerous modifications and variations of the original method. Some of the different methods include the use of dispersive tubes or cartridges, and some use graphitized ...