Establishment of a high-sensitivity indirect competitive ELISA for florfenicol in chicken meat and egg

Abstract The aim was to develop a highly sensitive indirect competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ic-ELISA) method for detecting florfenicol (FF) in chicken meat and eggs. The concentrations of the coated antigen and monoclonal antibodies of FF and the reaction conditions were optimised. The performance of the established method was thoroughly evaluated. The results indicated that the detection limit (LOD) was 0.011 μg kg −1 with an IC 50 of 0.224 μg kg −1 and a detection range of 0.011–4.538 μg kg −1 . The coefficient of variation between and within batches was less than 10%. The spiked recoveries of chicken meat samples ranged from 90.10 to 95.55%, while the spiked recoveries of egg samples ranged from 91.28 to 97.56%. In conclusion, the developed ic-ELISA method is highly sensitive and suitable for monitoring and detecting trace FF residues in chicken meat samples.