AR-News: (US KS) New Tests for Detecting Livestock Growth Promoter

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

cattlenetwork.com
Today    4/14/2004 8:27:21 AM


New Tests for Detecting Livestock Growth Promoter
 
Agricultural Research Service scientists in Fargo, North Dakota, have 
developed two new methods of detecting ractopamine hydrochloride, a feed additive 
given to pigs and cows so they'll produce leaner cuts of meat. 
 
Use of the methods by livestock producers, meat inspectors, or export 
companies, for example, should provide greater flexibility in where, when, and how 
they measure ractopamine residues in animals. Such monitoring helps the U.S. 
meat industry safeguard against illicit use or accidental exposure. It also 
ensures good trade relations with the European Union, which disallows animal growth 
promoters like ractopamine and other beta-adrenergic agonists. So say Weilin 
Shelver, a chemist, and David Smith, an animal physiologist, in the Animal 
Metabolism-Agricultural Chemicals Research Unit of ARS's Red River Valley 
Agricultural Research Center in Fargo. 
 
Their first method is an ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay), and the 
second is an optical biosensor. Both use a specialized type of protein called a 
monoclonal antibody. The scientists developed this antibody using modern 
biotechnology techniques. Both methods are fast, easy to use, specific, and 
sensitive, and they give similar measurements, notes Shelver. "The major difference 
is in how they make the measurements," she adds. "An advantage of the 
biosensor is that it sometimes gives less interference, or background noise, from the 
other materials in the sample."
 
In the United States, ractopamine has been approved for use in pigs since 
2001 and cattle since 2003. Ractopamine use leads to leaner, more efficient 
animals that reach their market weights sooner than untreated animals. With such 
gains, however, is the potential for illicit use in animals—such as fish, goats, 
and sheep—for which ractopamine approval hasn't been granted by the U.S. Food 
and Drug Administration. 







full story:


http://www.cattlenetwork.com/content.asp?contentid=1746 


“I personally cannot get overly worked up about the deprivation of human 
rights in a world where non-humans have no rights at all. Until animals and nature 
have rights, none of us have any rights at all because without animals, 
ecosystems and nature's diversity, rights are meaningless. Humans are a group that 
was never very successful to begin with. Overly territorial, obsessed with 
trivialities, violent, petty, and completely lacking in empathy for other 
species. The world would be a much nicer place without us." Captain Paul Watson 
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