Investigation of pharmaceuticals in processed animal by-products by liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry

There is an on-going trend for developing more sustainable salmon feed in which traditionally applied marine feed ingredients are replaced with alternatives. Processed animal products (PAPs) have been re-authorized as novel high quality protein ingredients in 2013. These PAPs may harbor undesirable substances such as pharmaceuticals and metabolites which are not previously associated with salmon farming, but might cause a potential risk for feed and food safety. To control these contaminants, an analytical strategy based on a generic extraction followed by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry (UHPLC-HRMS) using quadrupole time-of-flight mass analyzer (QTOF MS) was applied for wide scope screening. Quality control samples, consisting of PAP commodities spiked at 0.02, 0.1 and 0.2 mg/kg with 150 analytes, were injected in every sample batch to verify the overall method performance. The methodology was applied to 19 commercially available PAP samples from six different types of matrices from the EU animal rendering industry. This strategy allows assessing possible emergent risk exposition of the salmon farming industry to 1005 undesirables, including pharmaceuticals, several dyes and relevant metabolites.The authors acknowledge the financial support of the SAFETY-PAP project from the Norwegian Research Council for Research and Development (227387), National Institute of Nutrition and Seafood Research (NIFES, Norway). The authors also acknowledge the financial support from Generalitat Valenciana to the research group of the University Jaume I (Group of Excellence Prometeo 2009/054, Prometeo II 2014/023; Collaborative Research on Environment and Food Safety ISIC/2012/016). This work has been partly developed in the framework of the Research Unit of Marine Ecotoxicology (IATS (CSIC)-IUPA (UJI)).The authors wish to thank Richard Bade for skillful technical assistance regarding retention time prediction