Chloramphenicol (CAP) is a broad-spectrum antibiotic with historical veterinary uses in all major food-producing animals. It has serious side effects on humans that may cause aplastic anemia, and suspected carcinogen effect. Though banned for use in all food-producing animals by the EU, USA and Canada, residues of CAP at unacceptable levels continue to be found in food imports. We describe a simple sample preparation procedure followed by a high-speed LC separation and detection by a triple quadrupole MS operated in SRM mode and validation per European Commission Decision 2002/657/EC.

Chloramphenicol (CAP) (Figure 1) is a bacteriostatic antimicrobial previously used in veterinary medicine. CAP has been found to be potentially carcinogenic, which makes it an unacceptable substance for use with any foodproducing animals, including honey bees. We describe a quick, automated sample preparation, LC-MS/MS method for chloramphenicol (CAP) in honey by negative ion heated electrospray ionization (H-ESI) using a deuterated internal standard (CAP-d5).

The separation of four antibiotics was performed on a Thermo Scientific Acclaim 120 C18 5 µm column in under 15 minutes with UV detection.

The Thermo Scientific HPLC system is applied for the analysis of antibacterials. The separation is performed on a Thermo Scientific Hypersil GOLD HPLC column, with UV detection at 240 nm.

The Thermo Scientific HPLC system is applied for the analysis of chloramphenicol using the USP method. The separation is performed on a Thermo Scientific Syncronis C18 HPLC column in less than 5 minutes, with UV detection at 280 nm.