Study of effects of Fipronil and Fipronil‐sulfone on meat nutritional quality and validation of confirmatory GC‐MS/MS method for their analysis

The aim of this study was to validate the method for detection and quantification of fipronil and fipronil sulphone in meat products and study the effects of these pollutants on meat nutritional quality. The determination coefficients (R²) of the analytes were 0.999, while intra‐laboratory CV% for repeatability and reproducibility ranged from 0.83% to 19.19%. Meat nutritional quality was assessed before and after the addition of analytes in meat samples. Both total and essential amino acids in meat decreased (P < 0.001) with increasing levels of added analytes, suggesting their detrimental effect on meat amino acid composition. The amino acid composition of meat did not show an univocal behaviour as consequence of fipronil and fipronil sulphone addition. In particular, aspartate, glutamate, arginine (P < 0.05), threonine, alanine, lysine and proline (P < 0.001) showed a significant decrease with increasing levels of added analytes, while serine (P < 0.001) evidenced an opposite trend.