Development of Baccillus megaterium Disk Assay Kit for the Determination of Antibacterial Residues in Animal Tissues

식육중 잔류 향균물질의 검출을 위한 Bacillus megaterium 디스크 검사킷트 개발

Various antimicrobial drug screen tests have been used in order to ensure food safety. However, the conventional screen tests, the Swab Test on Premises(STOP, USA), the Calf Antibiotic and Sulfa Test(CAST, USA) and the European Economic Community 4-plate Test(FPT, EU) are not sufficiently rapid or sensitive enough to detect low levels of sulfa drugs in meat. We developed a new screen test kit for the determination of the antimicrobial residues in meat called the Bacillus megaterium Disk Assay(BmDA). A comparison of BmDA with the older screen tests showed BmDA was as good as the older ones with several advantages. The new test kit is faster-it can be read in 4∼6 hours instead of 16∼18 hours. Moreover, BmDA can discriminate sulfa drugs from other antimicrobial drugs because p-aminobenzoic acid countacts the inhibiting action of sulfa drugs. Minimum detectable levels of sulfa drugs were significantly improved at the lever of 0.025*0.1 pp, compared with the level of 1.0 ppm in FPT. A comparison of BmDA with the older screen tests in HPLC confirmed meat samples exceeded the Korean tolerance value of 0.1 ppm showed BmDA was the most sensitive in the microbiological screen tests. As the microbiological screen tests have already known, a person familiar with simple laboratory techniques should have no difficulty in using it to detect antimicrobial residues in meat. This would be a simple, economic method of antimicrobial residues detection which might be succesfully used by many laboratories.