Ferrando R, Truhaut R
Toxicol Eur Res. 1982 Sep;4(5):221-8.
Chemical substances as feed additives, pesticides, drugs or natural toxicants, may enter in the body of farm animals. They are then accumulated, transformed in metabolites more toxic but, generally, less toxic than initial ingested compounds. Farm animals are a biologic active relay able to change entirely conclusions from a direct toxicological evaluation on laboratory animals. It must be also underlined that physical and chemical very sophisticated methods carried out for isolation of toxics are not always in agreement with "in vivo" assays. We must consider residues availability. The methodology called "relay toxicity" consists essentially on the submission of the animal product which contain a mosaic of residues available or not, to long term testing in laboratory animal as pseudo-consumers. So it is possible to measure influences of a lot of metabolite in a dietary context. For these reasons we are thinking it is an appropriate procedure, taking its place among the test to be undertaken for a biological and a more realistic evaluation of additives drugs, pesticides residues or natural toxicants in the feeds of farm reared animals whose meat, eggs or milk will be eaten by human consumers.
化学物质作为饲料添加剂、农药、药物或天然毒物，可能会进入农场动物体内。它们随后会在体内蓄积，并转化为毒性更强但通常比最初摄入的化合物毒性更低的代谢产物。农场动物是一个生物活性中继体，能够完全改变基于对实验动物的直接毒理学评估得出的结论。还必须强调的是，用于分离毒物的非常复杂的物理和化学方法并不总是与“体内”试验结果一致。我们必须考虑残留的可利用性。所谓的“中继毒性”方法主要包括将含有各种残留（无论是否可利用）的动物产品，作为虚拟消费者在实验动物身上进行长期测试。这样就可以在饮食环境中测量多种代谢产物的影响。出于这些原因，我们认为这是一个合适的程序，在对农场饲养动物饲料中的添加剂、药物、农药残留或天然毒物进行生物学和更实际评估所需进行的测试中占有一席之地，这些动物的肉、蛋或奶将被人类消费者食用。
