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The most common, toxic, and carcinogenic mycotoxins found in human food and animal feed are the aflatoxins (AFs). The U.S. is a leading exporter of various nuts, with a marketing value of $9.1 billion in 2019; the E.U. countries are the major importers of U.S. nuts. In the past few years, border rejections and notifications for U.S. tree nuts and peanuts exported to the E.U. countries have increased due to AF contamination. In this work, we analyzed notifications from the “Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF)” on U.S. food and feed products contaminated with mycotoxins, primarily AFs, for the 10-year period 2010–2019. Almost 95% of U.S. mycotoxin RASFF notifications were reported for foods and only 5% for feeds. We found that 98.9% of the U.S. food notifications on mycotoxins were due to the AF contamination in almond, peanut, and pistachio nuts. Over half of these notifications (57.9%) were due to total AF levels greater than the FDA action level in food of 20 ng g−1. The Netherlands issued 27% of the AF notifications for U.S. nuts. Border rejection was reported for more than 78% of AF notifications in U.S. nuts. All U.S. feed notifications on mycotoxins occurred due to the AF contamination. Our research contributes to better understanding the main reasons behind RASFF mycotoxins notifications of U.S. food and feed products destined to E.U. countries. Furthermore, we speculate possible causes of this problem and provide a potential solution that could minimize the number of notifications for U.S. agricultural export market.
Ahmad Alshannaq; Jae-Hyuk Yu. Analysis of E.U. Rapid Alert System (RASFF) Notifications for Aflatoxins in Exported U.S. Food and Feed Products for 2010–2019. Toxins 2021, 13, 90 .
AMA StyleAhmad Alshannaq, Jae-Hyuk Yu. Analysis of E.U. Rapid Alert System (RASFF) Notifications for Aflatoxins in Exported U.S. Food and Feed Products for 2010–2019. Toxins. 2021; 13 (2):90.
Chicago/Turabian StyleAhmad Alshannaq; Jae-Hyuk Yu. 2021. "Analysis of E.U. Rapid Alert System (RASFF) Notifications for Aflatoxins in Exported U.S. Food and Feed Products for 2010–2019." Toxins 13, no. 2: 90.
Culture methods supplemented with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) technique provide a rapid and simple tool for detecting levels of aflatoxins (AFs) produced by fungi. This study presents a robust method for simultaneous quantification of aflatoxin (AF) B1, B2, G1, and G2 levels in several fungal cultivation states: submerged shake culture, liquid slant culture, and solid-state culture. The recovery of the method was evaluated by spiking a mixture of AFs at several concentrations to the test medium. The applicability of the method was evaluated by using aflatoxigenic and non-aflatoxigenic Aspergilli. A HPLC coupled with the diode array (DAD) and fluorescence (FLD) detectors was used to determine the presence and amounts of AFs. Both detectors showed high sensitivity in detecting spiked AFs or AFs produced in situ by toxigenic fungi. Our methods showed 76%–88% recovery from medium spiked with 2.5, 10, 50, 100, and 500 ng/mL AFs. The limit of quantification (LOQ) for AFs were 2.5 to 5.0 ng/mL with DAD and 0.025 to 2.5 ng/mL with FLD. In this work, we described in detail a protocol, which can be considered the foremost and only verified method, to extract, detect, and quantify AFs employing both aflatoxigenic and non-toxigenic Aspergilli.
Ahmad F. Alshannaq; Jae-Hyuk Yu. A Liquid Chromatographic Method for Rapid and Sensitive Analysis of Aflatoxins in Laboratory Fungal Cultures. Toxins 2020, 12, 93 .
AMA StyleAhmad F. Alshannaq, Jae-Hyuk Yu. A Liquid Chromatographic Method for Rapid and Sensitive Analysis of Aflatoxins in Laboratory Fungal Cultures. Toxins. 2020; 12 (2):93.
Chicago/Turabian StyleAhmad F. Alshannaq; Jae-Hyuk Yu. 2020. "A Liquid Chromatographic Method for Rapid and Sensitive Analysis of Aflatoxins in Laboratory Fungal Cultures." Toxins 12, no. 2: 93.
Mycotoxins are toxic secondary metabolites produced by certain filamentous fungi (molds). These low molecular weight compounds (usually less than 1000 Daltons) are naturally occurring and practically unavoidable. They can enter our food chain either directly from plant-based food components contaminated with mycotoxins or by indirect contamination from the growth of toxigenic fungi on food. Mycotoxins can accumulate in maturing corn, cereals, soybeans, sorghum, peanuts, and other food and feed crops in the field and in grain during transportation. Consumption of mycotoxin-contaminated food or feed can cause acute or chronic toxicity in human and animals. In addition to concerns over adverse effects from direct consumption of mycotoxin-contaminated foods and feeds, there is also public health concern over the potential ingestion of animal-derived food products, such as meat, milk, or eggs, containing residues or metabolites of mycotoxins. Members of three fungal genera, Aspergillus, Fusarium, and Penicillium, are the major mycotoxin producers. While over 300 mycotoxins have been identified, six (aflatoxins, trichothecenes, zearalenone, fumonisins, ochratoxins, and patulin) are regularly found in food, posing unpredictable and ongoing food safety problems worldwide. This review summarizes the toxicity of the six mycotoxins, foods commonly contaminated by one or more of them, and the current methods for detection and analysis of these mycotoxins.
Ahmad Alshannaq; Jae-Hyuk Yu. Occurrence, Toxicity, and Analysis of Major Mycotoxins in Food. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 2017, 14, 632 .
AMA StyleAhmad Alshannaq, Jae-Hyuk Yu. Occurrence, Toxicity, and Analysis of Major Mycotoxins in Food. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2017; 14 (6):632.
Chicago/Turabian StyleAhmad Alshannaq; Jae-Hyuk Yu. 2017. "Occurrence, Toxicity, and Analysis of Major Mycotoxins in Food." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 14, no. 6: 632.