The Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) ontology is downloaded weekly from EMBL-EBI at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/chebi/. The data is made available under the Creative Commons License (CC BY 3.0, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). For more information see: Degtyarenko et al. (2008) ChEBI: a database and ontology for chemical entities of biological interest. Nucleic Acids Res. 36, D344–D350.
A diastereoisomeric mixture of approximately equal amounts of all four possible diastereoisomers of 4-(1-hydroxy-2-{[4-(4-hydroxyphenyl)butan-2-yl]amino}ethyl)phenol. A beta-adrenergic agonist, it is used (generally as the hydrochloride salt) as a feed additive for use in pigs and other livestock to promote protein deposition, resulting in leaner meat. The R,R diastereoisomer, butopamine, is responsible for most of the leanness-enhancing effects. While use of ractopamine has been banned in over 120 countries including throughout the EU, in the US it used in an estimated 80% of all beef, pork and turkey production.