Korean scientist develops a CSM for antibiotics in chickens

Isn’t the chicken on my dinner table perhaps covered with antibiotics? To address such concern, Dr. Hyeong Seok-won (see photo), a fellow researcher of the Korea Standards Research Institute, said that he developed a certified reference material (CRM) to measure the level of residual antibiotics in chickens.

Korea’s per capita chicken consumption is 15.4 kilograms as of 2014, which is the largest except pork. If chickens are fed with feed containing too much antibiotics to boost growth, antibiotics-resistant bacteria could develop. In addition, when people take such chickens, the bacteria and residual antibiotics are likely to be accumulated and cause problems in their body.

Although Korean test agencies measure the residual amount of antibiotics in meat, critics have said that they are not objective because they have different test methods. The researcher developed a CSM to assess whether such test method is correct or not.

The researcher accurately measured the amount of antibiotics left in chickens after processing the chickens that were fed with feed with two kinds of antibiotics. Based on their result, they came to the conclusion that the test methods are reliable if the amount of both antibiotics are measured within the margin of error of 4.5 percent for Enrofloxacin and 3.49 percent for Ciprofloxacin.

“It is the first time that a CSM is developed for meat.” Dr. Hyeong said. “It can be used to inspect imported meat and I’ll also develop a CSM for the analysis of antibiotics in pork and beef.”

권예슬동아사이언스기자 yskwon@donga.com