The chemical burden on the environment and human population is increasing. Consequently, regulatory risk assessment must keep pace to manage, reduce, and prevent adverse impacts on human and environmental health associated with hazardous chemicals. Surveillance of chemicals of known, emerging, or potential future concern, entering the environment-food-human continuum is needed to document the reality of risks posed by chemicals on ecosystem and human health from a one health perspective, feed into early warning systems and support public policies for exposure mitigation provisions and safe and sustainable by design strategies. The use of less-conventional sampling strategies and integration of full-scan, high-resolution mass spectrometry and effect-directed analysis in environmental and human monitoring programmes have the potential to enhance the screening and identification of a wider range of chemicals of known, emerging or potential future concern. Here, we outline the key needs and recommendations identified within the European Partnership for Assessment of Risks from Chemicals (PARC) project for leveraging these innovative methodologies to support the development of next-generation chemical risk assessment.

Although antimicrobials are generally found in trace amounts in meat, the human health risk they bear cannot be ignored. With the ultimate aim of making a better assessment of consumer exposure, this study explored the effects of pan cooking on sulfonamides and tetracyclines in meat. Screening of these antimicrobials in cooked meat was first performed by the European Union Reference Laboratory on the basis of HPLC-MS/MS analyses. A proof of concept approach using radiolabeling was then carried out on the most cooking-sensitive antimicrobial—sulfamethoxazole—to assess if a thermal degradation could explain the observed cooking losses. Degradation products were detected thanks to separation by HPLC and monitoring by online radioactivity detection. HPLC-Orbitrap HRMS analyses completed by 1D and 2D NMR experiments allowed the structural characterization of these degradation compounds. This study revealed that cooking could induce significant antimicrobial losses of up to 45% for sulfamethoxazole. Six potential degradation products of ¹⁴C-sulfamethoxazole were detected in cooked meat, and a thermal degradation pattern was proposed. This study highlights the importance of considering the cooking step in chemical risk assessment procedures and its impact on the level of chemical contaminants in meat and on the formation of potentially toxic breakdown compounds.

Poultry feathers are nowadays partially re-introduced into the animal food chain and the environment. They are valorised by their transformation into feather meal in order to be used as fertilisers in agriculture but also in animal feed (in particular, pet food and fish feed). However, unlike food producing animals for humans, feathers from poultry animals are not subject to a ban or regulatory limits on the presence of antibiotic residue after veterinary treatment. Feathers could therefore be a potential reservoir of antibiotic residues, unintentionally exposing the environment and animals through food, which might contribute to the emergence of antibiotic resistance. To this end, a multi-class liquid chromatographic method coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was developed for the detection and determination of residues of 30 antibiotics from eight groups of antibacterial (quinolones, lincosamides, macrolides, penicillins, phenicols, tetracyclines, sulphonamides and diaminopyrimidines) in feathers. The extraction of the analytes from the feathers was carried out by the salting out technique. The separation of the analytes employed a Kinetex C18 column. Quantification was made using internal standards. All analytes have been validated according to the performance criteria of Decision 2002/657/EC. Trueness of the method ranged from to 93% to 111% for all analytes and intermediate precision were to 1.2–18.8%. The limits of quantification (LOQ) were from 13 to 150 µg kg⁻¹ depending on the analytes. The method is suitable for the monitoring and quantification of antibiotic residues in feathers over the range 13–600 µg kg⁻¹ depending on the compound.

Salmonella is the most relevant foodborne zoonotic agent found in swine, and its presence in French herds is significant. Its carriage is asymptomatic, which makes it difficult to detect during rearing, thus increasing the risk of its presence on pork meat. Studies have shown that enteric infection in animals could be associated with changes in the serum metabolome composition, through the immune response or changes in the digestive microbiota composition. We hypothesized that these changes in the serum metabolome composition could be used as markers for the detection of asymptomatic animals infected by Salmonella. Using untargeted analysis by liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry, we showed that significant differences in the composition of the serum metabolome could be detected between infected or noninfected animals both 1 and 21 days after experimental infection. This serum metabolome composition significantly changed during the 21 days postinfection in the infected animal groups, suggesting an evolution of the impact of infection with time. Despite this evolution, differences in the serum metabolome composition persisted between infected and noninfected animals 21 days after the initial infection. We also showed a possible difference between high-shedding and low-shedding animals 21 days postinfection. Finally, some of the variations in the metabolome were found to be significantly associated with variations of specific members of the fecal microbiota. Thus, excreting and asymptomatic animals, but also high-shedding animals, could be identified on the basis of their serum metabolome composition.