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Title: Rapid and routine detection of melamine in animal feed and food by FT-Raman technique

Author
item LIU, YONGLIANG - U-MD COLLEGE PARK
item Chao, Kuanglin - Kevin Chao
item Kim, Moon
item Lefcourt, Alan

Submitted to: Pittsburgh Conference
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/17/2009
Publication Date: 3/20/2009
Citation: Liu, Y., Chao, K., Kim, M.S., Lefcourt, A.M. 2009. Rapid and routine detection of melamine in animal feed and food by FT-Raman technique [abstract]. Proceedings of the Pittcon Meeting, March 8-13, 2009, Chicago, Illinois. Paper No. 2670-29.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: The impact of melamine contaminated animal feed ingredients on food safety and animal health has become a major public concern in the past 2 years. As the part of Food Protection Plan, US federal agencies, such as USDA/FSIS and FDA, and other organizations have established the GC-MS and LC-MS/MS procedures for the analysis of melamine in food/feed commodities. Although they can detect melamine contaminant in trace amounts, these time-consuming in-vitro procedures require chemical solvents for the extraction steps and depend on expensive mass spectrometry. Considering the fact that melamine was intentionally mixed with food/feed at high ratio to improve the product's protein amount, the mass method may not be adequate to rapidly screen large numbers of food/feed materials, from very different sources, for the presence of melamine. This study demonstrates that Raman technique could be an alternative approach in the detection of melamine as low as the level of 0.2 percent (w/w) and also in the prediction of its amount, by using the characteristic melamine Raman band near 670 cm-1. Notably, the algorithm approach is the most attractive and interesting since, in its simplest form, there is no calibration model which is commonly built from a large number of sample set. In addition, the use of intensity ratio at different wavelengths can reduce the influences from diverse samples, hence it could be universally applied for fast, accurate, specific, and routine screening of the presence of melamine contaminant in unknown products.