ABSTRACT
Antibiotics are routinely used in aquaculture husbandry practices to control disease. In order to assure the consumer that farmed fish contain only reasonable quantities of residual antibiotics, regulatory agencies, producers and food associations specify or adopt limits for such xenobiotics. While many methods have been reported for the analysis of antibiotic residues in fish, most procedures lacked specificity and sensitivity and very few protocols have been reported for salmon residue testing. We have developed a number of sensitive high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). analytical methods for the analysis of oxytetracycline, Romet-30, Tribrissen and penicillin G in Pacific salmon. The components of the potentiated sulphonamide, Romet-30 are sulphadimethoxine and ormetoprim; both of which could not he detected in salmon muscle tissue after 18 and 24 days post-adminstration, respectively. Oxytetracycline residues in fish muscle could not be detected after 45 days post-adminstration. Considerable inter-fish variability in salmon muscle drug residue retention was found for all antibiotics studied and precluded accurate estimates of wash-out times for Tribrissen and penicillin-G in particular.
