National Antivisection Society
Research projects 2002 - Toxicity
Detection and identification of shellfish toxins by pattern recognition and analysis
The current test for the detection of certain marine poisons is a mouse test classified by the Home Office as a procedure of ‘substantial’ severity. Mice are injected with shellfish or seawater extract and the presence of toxins causes the mice to become extremely subdued and unable to move; death occurs up to 12 hours afterwards, during which time the animals are unable to feed and drink.
When shellfish are to be landed for human consumption, UK and EU law requires that the animals and seawater are monitored to check whether the level of toxins are within safe limits. The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and the Foods Standards Agency are moving towards supporting non-animal methods for routine toxin surveillance, but these have not yet replaced the shellfish toxin mouse bioassay. Therefore the Lord Dowding Fund is supporting a PhD student supervised by Dr Martin Davies and Dr Sian Howells of Greenwich University, to develop an animal-free mass spectrometry based analytical method for the monitoring of shellfish toxins.
Mass spectrometry is a method of identifying chemical components of a substance and will be used in combination with a different technology, liquid chromatography, to establish how much of each component is present. Once the data from the two technologies is put onto a specially-designed computer programme, it is hoped to produce a standard set of data for each toxin which will give a 3-dimensional reference by which toxins present in shellfish samples can be identified quantitatively.
After this method has been perfected in the laboratory, pilot studies will be carried out at marine monitoring laboratories around the UK. Dr Davies states: “[this project] is intended to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach on a range of artificial and authentic samples, to present a strong case for adoption of the methodology by surveillance laboratories in place of the mouse assay.” The method could be applied to other agricultural toxins.
Following the EU directive in 1999, the UK monitoring programme of shellfish toxins in 2001-2002 has been increased. The minimum number of mice that will be used for this purpose this year is 6,000 for England, Wales, and Scotland, although the actual number could rise, as additional tests are carried out when toxins are found during initial monitoring.
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