An overview of the Feedstuffs-RADIUS project: rapid detection of banned antibiotics in animal feeds

The use of antimicrobial compounds as growth promoting substances has been a contentious issue for several years. Some believe that this widespread use of antibacterial substances worldwide is a significant contributor to the growing problem of bacterial antibiotic resistance that is having major adverse implications for human health. For this reason the European Commission took the decision to ban a number of antimicrobial compounds for use as growth promoting agents, i.e. zinc-bacitracin, spiramycin, tylosin, virginiamycin and olaquindox. However, in order to enforce this ban a new generation of reliable and sensitive analytical tests were required which could detect the presence of these drugs at low levels (i.e. at 20% of previously authorised minimum concentrations) in animal feeds. Based on this fact the Commission funded two research projects aimed at delivering the required methods. One of these projects, Feedstuffs-RADIUS, has recently ended. This project has been highly successful in delivering very high quality screening and confirmatory procedures capable of detecting five of the major antimicrobial growth promoters that were used in agricultural practise. The screening procedure is based on ELISA and the confirmatory technique utilises LC-MS/MS, and both were subjected to collaborative studies.