Author(s)

Miguel Cardo^1*, Américo Martins², Carla Raminhos², Maria Campos², Fernando Bernardo¹

¹Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (FMV), University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal.
²Autoridade de Seguranóa Alimentar e Económica, Laboratório de Físico-Química (LFQ), Lisbon, Portugal.

During 2006 and 2011, following the implementation of dioxin contamination monitoring in poultry meat, levels higher than legally allowed in meat from poultry slaughtered for human consumption, were found. The wood shavings used as bedding material in the poultry farm showed considerable high contaminations, indicating that these materials were the likely source of contamination of the animals. Wood shavings samples (n = 23), used as poultry litters in intensive farms of broilers, were analysed. In both episodes, contamination profiles of higher and lower concentrations, seem to be very similar, being OCDD, OCDF, 1,2,3,4,6,7,8-HpCDD and 1,2,3,4,6,7,8-HpCDF responsible for 97.4 % of the total contamination. The present work describes the analytical adapted, used methodology and the specific clean-up procedures, which revealed that recoveries of ¹³C₁₂-Labelled compounds added to the wood shavings samples ranged from 71.3% to 86.3%.

Dioxins, Wood Shavings, Analytical Method, Food Chain

Cardo, M. , Martins, A. , Raminhos, C. , Campos, M. and Bernardo, F. (2016) Determination of PCDD/F Levels in Wood Shavings Used as Bedding Material for Poultry Production. Journal of Environmental Protection, 7, 2047-2055. doi: 10.4236/jep.2016.713159.