A review is presented that in the first section describes current techniques for preparation, extraction and clean up of food samples for the determination of veterinary drug residues by chemical methods. The second section gives an overview of gas chromatographic methods published up to 1983 for the analysis of meat, liver, kidney, egg and milk for residues of antibiotics and chemotherapeutic agents. Discussed are stability of the compounds, derivatization, detection and particular aspects of their metabolism. The structural formula is given for all drugs mentioned. The procedures for determination are summarized in a table, together with the most important analytical parameters.