β-受体激动剂俗称“瘦肉精"，属于苯乙醇胺类药物，医学临床上主要用于扩张支气管和增加肺通气量，可治疗支气管哮喘等呼吸系统疾病。目前针对动物组织、尿液、血液中 β-受体激动剂的检测主要采用酶解结合固相萃取方法，但酶解时间通常达16小时以上，并且固相萃取时间也较长，特别是对实际市场监管常需要批量检测大量的实际样品，工作效率较低，纯手动操作带来的检测偏差也较大。

为解决这一问题，中国农业科学院农业质量标准与检测技术研究所、北京市畜牧总站、上海市兽药饲料检测所、北京市饲料监察所有关研究人员提出《全自动固相萃取结合超声探针辅助酶解快速批量定量测定动物源性食品中的22种β-受体激动剂残留》，并将有关研究成果发布在《Food Chemistry》 期刊。本研究采用超声探针辅助酶解，从动物源性食品中充分提取β-激动剂仅需2分钟，结合全自动固相萃取的批量、自动化处理，30分钟内可同时处理 36 份样品。

“A high demand exists in veterinary drug residual analysis for rapid, automatic and high-throughput analytical techniques that produce data simultaneous and faster. Here, we describe a combined automated solid-phase extraction (SPE) and enzymatic probe sonication (EPS), subsequently ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) for the quick extraction, automated clean-up as well as simultaneous quantification of 22 β-agonists residues in animal-derived foods. Enhanced by the ultrasonic probe, only 2 min was needed for exhaustively extraction of β-agonists from foods of animal-origin; whereas traditional enzymatic digestion methods require hours or even days, which making it more appropriate for high throughput biomonitoring.Moreover, the clean-up and pre-concentration procedures were conducted on the automatic SPE, which allowed 36 samples being performed simultaneously within 30 min. The method was successfully applied for analyzing 56 animal-derived food samples, 53.6 % of which contained detectable levels of at least one kind of β-agonists. Interestingly, both the detection rate and residual level of β-agonists in the ruminants (bovine and sheep) were higher as compared with the swine. Concerning the real food samples analyzed, the findings of this study suggest that stricter measures should be adopted to control the illegal usage of β-agonists on the farm animals, particularly for the ruminants."