Analysis of pesticide and veterinary drug residues in baby food by liquid chromatography coupled to Orbitrap high resolution mass spectrometry

Abstract

Pesticide and veterinary drug residues have been simultaneously determined in several baby foods as meat, fish and vegetable-based baby food. A generic extraction method without clean-up step was applied. Moreover, the use of a representative matrix for proper quantification of all target compounds was studied and the best results were obtained when vegetable-based baby food was used as representative matrix, allowing the reliable quantification of more than 300 compounds. The method was validated and good recoveries were obtained for most of compounds at concentrations higher than 50µgkg−1. Limits of detection (LOD) ranged from 0.5 to 50µgkg−1, whereas limits of quantification (LOQ) were established between 10 and 100µgkg−1. Limits of identification (LOIs) ranged from 0.5 to 50µgkg−1. This method was applied to the analysis of 46 different baby food samples and no positive samples were found.