Antibacterial
drugs intended to be used as growth promoters are added to
the feed of entire herds and flocks at subtherapeutic levels
over an extended period of time. These performance enhancing
antibacterial growth promoters (AGPs) are regulated by
Council Directive 70/524/EEC <1>.
Residues of
antibacterial growth promoters (AGPs) in food could lead to
allergic reactions but the greatest threat is the development of
resistant strains of bacteria which could lead to an improper
response to normal drug treatment in humans. For these reasons the
European Commission decided to ban some of the regulated growth
promoters. With Council Regulation 2821/98 <2> zinc bacitracin,
spiramycin, tylosin and virginiamycin, and with Commission
Regulation 2788/98 <3> olaquindox, were banned from animal feed.
The multi-AGP
screening method developed in the Feedstuffs-RADIUS project
is a competitive enzyme immunoassay (EIA) for simultaneously
screening of five banned antibacterial growth promoters,
i.e. virginiamycin, spiramycin, zinc bacitracin, tylosin and
olaquindox in animal feeds. Both the development and
validation of the EIA was performed in accordance with
Commission Decision 2002/657/EC <4>.
LIST OF ALL
EURO-DIAGNOSTICA PRODUCTS AND DATA SHEETS
Sulfamethazine EIA