Analysis of tylosin in poultry litter by HPLC-UV and HPLC-MS/MS after LTPE.

Abstract

The growing demand for chicken meat in Brazil encourages poultry producers to invest in antibiotics as growth promoters to ensure the quality of their products. Among these, the antibiotic tylosin is a widely used growth promoter that assists in the treatment of necrotic enteritis. Antibiotics usually are not totally metabolised and may be excreted in its original form, thereby contaminating different environmental compartments and may induce microbial resistance. Therefore, analyses of such contaminants in different matrices are important to perform risk assessments and this often depends on the development of extraction methods to allow the quantification of the substance at low concentrations. This work presents a simple and cheap methodology which employs low-temperature partitioning extraction (LTPE) for the analysis of tylosin in poultry litter samples by HPLC-UV and HPLC-MS/MS. The analytical method developed was validated according to Brazilian regulating agencies (ANVISA and MAPA) and resulted in method detection (LDM) and quantification (LQM) limits of 6.32 μg.kg−1 and 21.12 μg.kg−1, respectively. The analysis of the waste from a chicken broiler company, located in Minas Gerais, confirmed the adequacy of the method, since it detected tylosin at average concentrations of 135.22 μg.kg−1 and 264.92 μg.kg−1 in poultry litter from sheds containing birds in the rearing and production phase, respectively.