USDA Boosts Food Safety Research With Purchase of ACQUITY TQD System

UPLC/Tandem Quadrupole Mass Spectrometry System Intended for Veterinary Drug Residue Analysis of Poultry and Livestock

Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT) announced today that the United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service has purchased a Waters® ACQUITY® TQD System to develop rapid and accurate test methods for screening poultry and beef for trace concentrations of veterinary drug residues. The instrument purchased is for the USDA’s Wyndmoor, Pa. research laboratory.

Farm-raised poultry and livestock often receive drugs to protect them from disease and promote their growth. Through ignorance, carelessness or deceit on the part of a small number of producers, poultry and livestock that enter the food chain can contain banned substances or legal drugs at concentrations that exceed maximum allowable levels. The need to obtain more information from a single injection is underscored by increasing demands on laboratory time and resources for reproducible, highly-accurate and precise results on larger numbers of samples.

Analytical methods that employ UltraPerformance Liquid Chromatography (UPLC®) coupled with tandem mass spectrometry can screen for more than 100 different drug residues at a time at concentrations of less than 10 ng/mL, a big improvement in speed, efficiency, and sensitivity over the seven-plate bioassays.

The USDA chose Waters ACQUITY TQD System based on criteria for a UPLC/MS/MS system with a tandem quadrupole mass spectrometry detector capable of 20 millisecond positive and negative switching, a feature deemed highly-important for multi-analyte detection of both positively and negatively-charged compounds in a single analytical run.

Waters ACQUITY TQD System features the Waters ACQUITY UltraPerformance LC® System (UPLC®), a tandem quadrupole (TQ) mass detector, ACQUITY BEH analytical columns, all operated under Waters MassLynx™ 4.1 Mass Spectrometry Software. The MassLynx Software includes TargetLynx™ software for targeted analyte quantification and the QuanOptimise™ feature for automated system optimization and method development. This UPLC/MS/MS system operates with 1.7 micron ACQUITY BEH Columns and is a true UPLC system for measuring concentrations of veterinary drug residues, pesticides, and other contaminants in foods and beverages.

For More Information

More information on Waters ACQUITY TQD System, visit www.waters.com/tqd. For more information on Waters entire portfolio of LC/MS/MS products, please visit: www.waters.com/ms.

About Waters Corporation

Waters Corporation creates business advantages for laboratory-dependent organizations by delivering practical and sustainable innovation to enable significant advancements in such areas as healthcare delivery, environmental management, food safety, and water quality worldwide.

Pioneering a connected portfolio of separations science, laboratory information management, mass spectrometry and thermal analysis, Waters technology breakthroughs and laboratory solutions provide an enduring platform for customer success.

With revenue of $1.58 billion in 2008 and 5,000 employees, Waters is driving scientific discovery and operational excellence for customers worldwide.