Pharmacokinetics and Risk Management of Drug Residues in Livestock

Dear Colleagues,

Global consumers expect their food supply to be free of drug and chemical contaminants, and compromised chemical food safety becomes a food security challenge irrespective of volume of food generated for human consumption. Livestock production systems have over the years increased their production capacity to meet demand and used the best available science to ensure that food generated from these production systems is safe for human consumption. Scientists in this field have been challenged by the variety of livestock species and production classes within the species, variability within a given production class, variety of therapeutic dosage regimens, variability in livestock management practices and good veterinary practices, and variability in surveillance methods to determine whether food products are below safe levels for these drugs. Livestock are not only exposed intentionally to veterinary drugs for therapeutic use, but they can also be exposed accidentally to environmental contaminants. The question that often arises is how we can best manage the risk of drug or chemical exposure to these substances via consumption of food from livestock production. In brief, this will involve establishing safe levels from chemical risk assessment of toxicology studies and using pharmacometric tools to estimate how long it will take for the substance to be cleared from the body of the livestock such that the meat, milk, and eggs are safe for human consumption.

The regulatory environment and science that inform the management of drug residues in livestock are often changing with new inputs from novel scientific (e.g., pharmacometrics) approaches and governmental policy. The goal of this special issue is to present a collection of manuscripts that provide up-to-date research and regulatory information that could in the future impact the management of drug and chemical residues in food from livestock production. Authors are invited to submit manuscripts that are original research, reviews, short communications, and concept papers and encompass the following broad areas: (1) current and future regulatory environment/requirements for establishing MRLs/tolerance on a global scale, (2) use of current and novel pharmacometric tools to calculate drug withdrawal intervals in food animals, (3) original studies on pharmacokinetics and tissue residue depletion of drugs in food animals, and (4) extension and educational tools to inform veterinarians and producers.

Prof. Dr. Ronald E. Baynes
Prof. Dr. Lisa Tell
Dr. Fiona Maunsell
Dr. Zhoumeng Lin
Dr. Jennifer L. Davis
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• pharmacokinetics
• drug residue
• livestock
• risk
• chemical
• food safety assessment