Development and validation of a liquid chromatographic/ tandem mass spectrometric method for determination of chlortetracycline, oxytetracycline, tetracycline, and doxycycline in animal feeds

A selective and accurate LC/MS/MS method for the simultaneous determination of chlortetracycline (CTC), oxytetracycline (OTC), tetracycline (TC), and doxycycline (DC) in animal feeds was developed. Samples were extracted with Na2EDTA-McIlvaine buffer and further purified with Oasis HLB SPE columns. The purified extract was separated on an Xbridge C18 column and detected by LC/MS/MS with positive electrospray ionization in the multiple reaction monitoring mode. This method provided average recoveries of 80.9 to 119.5%, with CVs of 1.7 to 9.8% in the range of 0.5 to 50 mg/kg CTC, OTC, TC, and DC in feeds, except the average recovery of CTC was 76.0%, with a CV of 14.6% in pig feed spiked with 0.5 mg/kg CTC. The linear ranges for the four TCs determined by LC/MS/MS ranged from 0.005 to 2.5 microg/mL with a linear correlation coefficient (R2) >0.99. The LOD and LOQ for CTC, OTC, TC, and DC in pig and poultry feeds ranged from 0.003 to 0.02 and 0.01 to 0.05 microg/g, respectively. The method was successfully applied for the analysis of 30 real feed samples, and no illegal use was detected.