Zilpaterol is a β₂-receptor agonist, also known as “Clenbuterol”, often used in livestock breeding by illegal businesses. There is no relevant national standard that stipulates its residue limit. After the veterinary drug enters the animal’s body, it can change the metabolic mode of certain nutrients, promote the growth of the animal’s muscle, and rapidly consume and transform the fat in the animal’s body, thereby increasing the lean meat rate of the animal. The current detection method for the drug is mainly liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, which has the disadvantages of high cost, cumbersome operation, and long time-consuming. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy has the advantages of high sensitivity and fast detection speed. In recent years, it has beenwidely used to detect toxic and harmful substances in food. In order to realize the rapid detection of zilpaterol in pork, a surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy method for rapid detection of zilpaterol residue in pork was established. By optimising and comparing a series of experimental results, it is determined that the best volume ratio of sample to gold glue is 1∶2, and the best mixing detection time is 3 min.Through the comparison of multiple extraction solvents, it is finally determined that ethyl acetate is used as the extractant;through the calculation of the theoretical spectrum of B3LYP/6-311 + G(d) basis group aligned patro in density functional theory, the SERS characteristic peak of zipatro is determined and the vibration is assigned. The characteristic peaks at 1 116, 1 447 and 1 573 cm^-1 are taken as the characteristic quantitative peaks of zilpaterol, of which 1 116 cm^-1 is caused by the in-plane deformation vibration of a benzene ring, and 1 447 cm^-1 is the out of plane swing vibration of C—H bond, 1 573 cm^-1 is the stretching vibration of C—H bond of the benzene ring. Under the best experimental conditions, a standard curve of the characteristic peak SERS signal and concentration logarithm of zilpaterol standard solution was established, and the R² value of the linear equation was all above 0.9; actual samples with different spiked concentrations were performed. The detection showed that the average recovery rate was 80.39%~101.24%, and the RSD value was 7.90%~8.94%. This method is convenient, fast, and stable. It can realize the rapid and accurate determination of zilpaterol residues in pork without complicated sample pretreatment. It provides a new method for detecting zilpaterol and the formulation of related standards.