Tissue deposition and residue depletion of melamine in fattening pigs following oral administration

Abstract

The adulteration of animal feed as well as milk products with melamine has led to concerns about the ability to establish appropriate withdrawal intervals to ensure food safety. Two experiments were conducted in this study. The first was to investigate the deposition and depletion of melamine in blood and tissues of pigs exposed to adulterated feed with high doses of melamine. A total of 500 or 1000 mg kg^–1 melamine was added to the diet for fattening pigs (initial BW = ±60.24 kg). Melamine residues were detected in tissues (brain, duodenum, liver, heart, muscle and kidney) by LC-MS/MS. Dose-dependent effects were found between melamine residual concentration and its dose in feed. Five days after the withdrawal of melamine from the diets, the residue concentration in tissues fell below 2.5 mg kg^–1. In the second experiment, blood samples were taken at different time points from fattening pigs (BW = 100 kg) fed with adulterated feed with 1000 mg kg^–1 of melamine for 42 days. Results from the pharmacokinetics analysis showed that it would take 83 h for the melamine level in plasma depleting to the safe level of 50 ng ml^–1 after an expose of 1000 mg kg^–1 melamine contaminated feed for 42 days.

Keywords:

• melamine
• fattening pig
• deposition
• depletion
• pharmacokinetics

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Dr. Jing Qiu for technical assistance. The authors also wish to acknowledge Dr. Joris Michiels for his useful suggestions and English editing.

Funding

This work was financially supported by the Sichuan Key Technology R&D Program [grant number 09NZ0055] of the Science & Technology Department of Sichuan Province, China.