Extensive research on the presence of veterinary drug residues in food samples has been conducted and is still underway. The inappropriate or excessive use of veterinary drugs in food producing animals may result in trace quantities of these drugs or their metabolites in food samples. Food contamination by veterinary drug residues is one of the main challenges worldwide to public health with drug resistance being the biggest threat. One of the challenges in veterinary drug residue analysis is their occurrence in trace amounts that are normally below limits of detection of most analytical instruments. Various efficient, economical, miniaturized and environmentally friendly extraction methods have been developed in recent years to pre-concentrate these analytes before instrumental analysis to enhance their detection and also to overcome the limitations of traditional extraction methods such as liquid-liquid extraction and solid phase extraction. These methods include quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe (QuEChERS), molecularly imprinted polymers, dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction and hollow fiber liquid-phase microextraction, and they will be discussed in this chapter.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.