Bee products can be produced in an environment contaminated by pesticides that can be transported by honey bees to the hive and incorporated into the honey. Therefore, rapid and modern methods to determine pesticide residues in honey samples are essential to guarantee consumers' health. In this study, a simple multiresidue method for the quantification of 116 pesticides in honey is proposed. It involves the use of a modified QuEChERS procedure followed by UHPLC-MS/MS analysis. The method was validated according to the European Union SANCO/12571/2013 guidelines. Acceptable values were obtained for the following parameters: linearity, limit of detection (0.005mg/kg) and limit of quantification (0.010 and 0.025mg/kg), trueness (for the four tested levels the recovery assays values were between 70 and 120%), intermediate precision (RSD<20.0%) and measurement uncertainty tests (<50.0%). The validated method was applied for determination of 100 honey samples from five states of Brazil.

Beef meat is an important food that can be contaminated by pesticides. This study aimed to optimize a multiresidue method for identification and quantification of pesticides in beef meat by liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry detection (LC-MS). The extraction and clean-up procedures were adapted from the QuECHERS method. From the 188 analytes tested, the method was validated as qualitative method for 19 compounds and as quantitative method for 152 compounds. The results were satisfactory, yielding coefficients of variation of less than 20% and recoveries ranging from 70% to 120% and expanded uncertainty of less than 50%. The quantification limit was typically 10 µg kg (but 25 µg kg for 12 of the compounds) and the detection limit was 5.0 µg kg. Thirty-two real samples of commercialized beef meat were analyzed without any residual pesticide being found. Thus, the results showed that the multiresidue method for detecting 171 pesticides, using adapted QuECHERS for extraction and LC-MS for detection, is suitable for analyzing beef meat.