Biogenic Amines

The control and determination of biogenic amines in different kinds of foods in particular in meat products is important to assure their safety and high level of quality. Having precise analysis techniques, with few limitations and easy to perform and reproduce is a challenge for analysts, researchers, control laboratories, and companies. This chapter includes a detailed protocol for a chromatographic simultaneous determination of the most common biogenic amines (BA) (tyramine, β-phenylethylamine, histamine, putrescine, cadaverine, tryptamine, agmatine, spermidine, and spermine) that can be found in meat and meat productsMeat products. This protocol description includes both the acid samples extraction step of the BA and their determination by liquid chromatographyLiquid chromatography which employs a cation-exchange column for BA separation and with a post-column system for the derivatization process using o-phthalaldehyde as a derivatizing reagentDerivatizing reagents. This method showed an appropriate, precise, fast, and versatile procedure to determine nine BA simultaneously in different matrices of meat productsMeat products.