Worldwide food safety concerns have risen dramatically as the number of food contamination incidents and product recalls has increased. Every food analysis starts with sample preparation, which is widely accepted as one of the most critical steps of LC/MS. Increased demand for higher throughput, accuracy and lower matrix interference from food analysis laboratories has made sample preparation the largest bottleneck. Turbulent flow chromatography technology can eliminate the need for lengthy offline sample preparation steps, thereby eliminating these disadvantages.

Most current methodologies for the quantitation of antibiotics in drinking water revolve around analysis using triple stage quadrupole platforms with offline sample preparation. This is a proven technique for the analysis of many contaminants in various types of water samples, but the offline sample preparation steps are time-consuming and prone to operator error and reproducibility problems. We demonstrate the ability to directly inject the water sample without any offline preconcentration. We utilize LC-MS with a Thermo Scientific Exactive Plus Orbitrap MS using HR/AM.

Veterinary drugs are pharmacologically active compounds that can result in non-desirable drug residues in the food chain. Animals with high amounts of these drugs can cause harm in humans or can render the use of antibiotics useless due to the counter effects of the drugs. The quantification of over 200 multi-class veterinary drugs from different meat products usually involves time consuming extraction methods with either SPE or LLE. We describe a robust method, utilizing a single LC-MS/MS run to quantitate over 200 veterinary drugs in a variety of matrices.

There is increasing demand to provide rapid and selective screening techniques for a wide range of antibiotic drugs. Their abuse as a feed supplement in food animals is of growing concern and is subject to regulations globally. Creating screening methods for multiple analytes is more cost effective than dedicated methods for fewer analytes. This application shows the advantages of using the Thermo Scientific Accucore Vanquish C18 UHPLC 1.5 µm column and Vanquish UHPLC system for the analysis of thirty-six antibiotics.

Sulfonamides are a common class of synthetic antimicrobials that are widely used in human and in veterinary medicine and as feed additives to promote growth in concentrated animal feeding operations. They are regarded as emerging contaminants that are introduced into the environment predominantly in the USA and Europe. We describe a method for the determination of sulfonamide antibiotics at trace levels in effluent wastewaters.