Antibiotics in veterinary medicine: contamination of livestock production

Abstract

The safety of raw materials and food is one of the most important tasks in ensuring human safety. Food could be contaminated by veterinary drugs. Antibiotics and some their transformation products residues not only cause direct harm for the consumers health, such as allergic reactions, but also contribute the antibiotic resistance development. Recent methods in the analysis of antibiotics allow to investigate their distribution, accumulation and degradation in water, soil, plants, organs and tissues, as well as to determine their residues in food and raw materials at the maximum permissible levels. This work concerns the characteristics of the main groups antibacterial drugs used for the prevention and treatment of infectious animals’ diseases and the analysis of their identification in animal products (milk and dairy products, eggs, honey, meat and meat products) in 2020-2021 using high-performance liquid chromatography with mass spectrometric detection. Universal approaches in the sample preparation and antibiotics determination assist the analysis time reducing, while ensuring its accuracy, and in addition, increase the range of identified potentially dangerous pollutants. The analysis of the antibiotic’s residues identification above maximum permissible levels showed that the highest percentage is reported for quinolones (41.1%). Groups of antibiotics with minimal contamination risk include aminoglycosides, pleuromutilins and cephalosporins. The data obtained are considered in risk-based approach of planning, sampling and analysis evaluation within the framework of food safety monitoring carried out by the Rosselkhoznadzor.