Abstract: A method for the rapid detection of drug residues in livestock to allow quality certification, involves: taking a bile sample from livestock; cleaning the bile sample by passing the sample under vacuum through a porous silica immunoaffinity column having an immobilized antibody capable of binding the drug to be detected, washing the column free of impurities, and eluting any drug being bound to the column with a suitable solvent; and reacting the cleaned bile sample in a competitive immunometric assay utilizing a labelled antibody.