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Mycotoxins: what is next?
“Mycotoxins 2009” was the title of a one-day scientific meeting in
March 2009 in Thailand. Different aspects of mycotoxins in feed and
food were discussed by a group of speakers from academic centres and
the industry.
“Mycotoxins 2009” was the title of a one-day scientific meeting in March 2009 in Thailand. Different aspects of mycotoxins in feed and food were discussed by a group of speakers from academic centres and the industry.
Mycotoxins continue to cause significant economic losses in animal production industries all around the world. We know that some preventive strategies can help reducing mycotoxin formation, but this becomes much more difficult when predisposing factors have a strong presence in the field, during harvest or storage. Unfortunately, there is no way to accurately determine the financial losses resulted from mycotoxins in different sectors of the agricultural industries.
One issue that has become very important is the presence of multiple mycotoxins in grains infected by fungi. This situation may occur especially in animal feeds compounded from ingredients produced in different geographic regions. Multiple mycotoxin contamination is of great concern to the poultry industry because mycotoxins can have additive or synergistic effects on poultry health status and productivity.
We should also realize that there are problems associated with the way that we take samples (ingredients and feeds) for laboratory analysis. We really do not know if submitted samples represent the whole batch. We also can not be very sure if mycotoxin concentrations in analyzed samples are a proper reflection of the entire batch.
An emerging issue in this area is “masked” mycotoxins. These mycotoxins can escape routine laboratory detection but they are actually present in the feed and will be ingested by the animals (1, 2).
I think that we will have to live with mycotoxins forever. What do you think?
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