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Food safety crises involving persistent organic pollutants POPs lead to systematic slaughter of livestock to prevent contaminants from entering the food chain. Therefore, there is a need to develop strategies to depurate livestock moderately contaminated with POPs to reduce economic and social damage. To better understand the underlying mechanisms of the depuration process, lipophilic POPs and lipid fluxes were co-monitored in various body and excretion compartments.
Body compartments adipose tissues, muscle, liver and blood and the total empty body were analyzed for lipids and POPs concentrations and burdens at slaughter, as well as excretion compartments faeces and wool collected during the depuration period.
Decreases in empty body total and lipid weights were 6-fold higher in underfed and supplemented ewes compared to control ewes. In addition, over the depuration period undernutrition and supplementation treatment increased faecal TCDD, PCBs and excretions by 1. This induced 2- to 3-fold higher decreases in the empty body POPs burdens for underfed and supplemented ewes. Fine descriptions at once of POPs kinetic companion paper 1 and mass balance companion paper 2 , and of body lipid dynamics were very useful in improving our understanding of the fate of POPs in the ruminants.
They have specific physico-chemical properties: they are persistent in the environment and bioaccumulate in animal fat-rich tissues, organs and excreta due to their lipophilicity [ 1 ].
