Determination of clopidol residues in chicken tissues by liquid chromatography: part III. Quality control analysis of export chickens.

A summary is presented of the liquid chromatographic (LC) determination of clopidol residues in export chickens from 1992 to 1999. Over the past 8 years, we analyzed >7000 chicken samples. A total of 0.66% of samples contained clopidol residues, ranging from 0.005 to 0.79 mg/kg; however, none exceeded 3 mg/kg, the Chinese maximum residue limit. In comparison with 1992, the number of samples multiplied 70-fold, and the frequency of clopidol found in samples decreased 148-fold in 1999. The chickens inspected were exported to foreign countries; all were cleared by the buyers with no disputes. This report also introduces the critical control points of the proposed LC method as well as identification of false-positive procedures by both experience and LC/mass spectrometric confirmation. Our experiences over the past 8 years have demonstrated that the ruggedness of the proposed LC method is quite good.