Determination of Food Contaminant Fipronil and its Metabolites Using LCMSMS with Minimal Sample Preparation

Ariovaldo Bisi, EMEA SLS, PerkinElmer, Milano, Italy

The recent outbreak of fipronil in egg  started most likely because   a provider of pest control services in the Netherlands was selling the commonly used sanitizing agent DEGA-16 fortified with the pesticide that is not allowed for laying hens treatment.

Since eggs are also used for foodstuff and bakery products the need to accomplish wide-range investigation pushed for the development of quick, sensitive, interference free method of analysis supported by a fast, cheap sample preparation procedure.

In this communication we’ll evaluate the use of a novel triple quadrupole design to analyze the content of fipronil and its metabolites in eggs well below the legal cutoff level of 5 ppb; the proposed method includes a simple, fast, low cost sample preparation procedure and provides low ppt quantitation limits, high linearity and good recovery for all the target analyties.