The combined determinations of multiple veterinary drugs in animal foods by high‐performance liquid chromatography‐diode array detection and their application in drug residue investigation

Abstract The application of veterinary drugs has brought great economic benefits, but its unreasonable application has also caused a series of safety problems. The study aimed to establish methods that will provide accurate quantitative information for the monitoring of veterinary drug residues in animal‐derived foods. Selecting nine veterinary drugs in four categories, the study combined quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe technology with high‐performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to detect multiple veterinary drugs in animal foods simultaneously. The study established two rapid, efficient, and accurate HPLC‐diode array detection methods to achieve the simultaneous detection of nitroimidazoles and β‐adrenergic agonists, and the simultaneous detection of benzimidazoles and diethylstilbestrol. The limit of detection of the former was 1.36–2.05 μg/kg and the latter 0.42–0.72 μg/kg. Then the two methods were used to detect veterinary drug residues in 297 animal foods from 10 categories to investigate the drug residues. For the seven banned drugs, the detection rates ranged from 1.35% to 7.41%. And for the two restricted drugs, the over‐standard rates were 4.38% and 0.00%.