Veterinary Research Communications, 30(Suppl. 1) (2006) 109–112 DOI: 10.1007/s11259-006-0022-z C  Springer 2006 Mid and Near Infrared Spectroscopy to Identify Illegal Treatments in Beef Cattle P. Berzaghi ∗ , S. Segato, G. Cozzi and I. Andrighetto Department of Animal Science, University of Padova, Padova, Italy ∗ Correspondence: E-mail: paolo.berzaghi@unipd.it Berzaghi, P., Segato, S., Cozzi, G. and Andrighetto, I., 2006. Mid and near infrared spectroscopy to identify illegal treatments in beef cattle. Veterinary Research Communications, 30(Suppl. 1), 109–112 Keywords: illegal growth promoter, infrared spectroscopy, meat Abbreviations: ADD, boldione; DHEA, dehydroepiandrosterone; IBW, initial body weight; IR, infrared; MIR, mid infrared; NIR, near infrared INTRODUCTION The use of hormones to enhance animal growth performance is illegal in the EU. Neverthe- less, growth promoters are still used on many beef farms due to their economic benefits and the difficulties in identifying treated animals with the official analytical methods. Therefore, there is a strong need for analytical techniques that can quickly identify such animals both preventing their meat from reaching the market, but also discouraging this illegal practice. To be effective the analytical method has to meet some major requirements: it must be applicable throughout the entire productive chain (from the farm to the market); it must be rapid to obtain results before the meat reaches the market; it must be reasonably priced to allow widespread use. Infrared spectroscopic (IR) techniques have a potential for meeting all of these re- quirements. They are based on the properties of different molecules to selectively absorb (McKelvy et al., 1998) infrared at different wavelengths. Infrared methods are widely used for feed and food analysis (Clark and Short, 1994; Berzaghi et al., 2005) with two major classes of techniques: those based on the mid IR (MIR) often used for liquids (i.e. milk and wine) and the near IR (NIR) used more commonly for solid samples (i.e. meat and cheese). Besides their use for assessing quality, spectroscopic techniques were also successfully tested for the identification of different feeding regimens in beef (Cozzolino et al., 2002) and chicken (Fumiere et al., 2000). As growth promoters may affect the metabolism of growing animals and the quality traits of meat, the study was intended to assess the use of MIR and NIR methods as indicators of the use of illegal growth promoters in beef cattle. 109