This report reveals that substantial knowledge is available about the aflatoxin challenge that plagues African farmers, other agri-entrepreneurs, and governments. Commissioned by the ACP-EU Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) in collaboration with the African Union Commission - Partnership for Aflatoxin Control in Africa (PACA), this literature review reveals that a wide range of commodities that are traded nationally, regionally and internationally are contaminated by aflatoxins. African citizens and economies are negatively impacted as a result.
This book provides an evaluation of measures to reduce exposure to highly toxic and carcinogenic contaminants in staple diets in Africa as well as parts of Asia and Latin America. Many of the poorest people in these regions are exposed to the pervasive natural toxins, aflatoxins and fumonisins, on a daily basis by eating their staple diet of groundnuts, maize, and other cereals. Exposure to mycotoxins at these high levels substantially increases mortality and morbidity. Aflatoxins are a cause of human liver cancer, and fatalities from acute aflatoxin poisoning outbreaks occur in Africa and Asia. The International Agency for Research on Cancer convened a Working Group of world-leading experts to review the health effects of aflatoxins and fumonisins and to evaluate intervention measures. The panel concluded that these mycotoxins not only are a cause of acute poisoning and cancer but also are a likely contributor to the high levels of stunting in children in affected populations. The Working Group also identified effective measures to reduce exposure in developing countries. The panel evaluated 15 interventions, considering the strength of the evidence as well as its completeness and its transferability at an individual, community, or national level. Four of the interventions were judged to be ready for implementation: improvement of dietary diversity; crop sorting; post-harvest measures, including improved storage; and, in Latin America for maize, optimized nixtamalization. These recommendations would be relevant for investment of public, nongovernmental organization, and private funds at the scale of the subsistence farmer, the smallholder, and through to a more advanced value chain.
This Edited Volume Mycotoxins - Impact and Management Strategies is a collection of reviewed and relevant research chapters, offering a comprehensive overview of recent developments in the field of Mycotoxicology. The book comprises of single chapters authored by various researchers and edited by an expert active in this research area. This book is divided into three sections. Section 1 consists of one chapter that gives an overview of the socioeconomic impact of mycotoxins. Section 2 has five chapters that address the prevention and control of aflatoxins both at pre- and post-harvest stages. Section 3 has two chapters that deal with health impact and control in the poultry industry. This publication aims at providing a thorough overview of the latest research efforts in the field and opens new possible research paths for further novel developments in addressing the problem of mycotoxins.
This book is an outcome of the MycoGlobe conference in Accra. Most of the chapters are based on invited oral presentations made at the conference. The chapters in this book touch on issues including health, trade, ecology, epidemiology, occurrence, detection, management, awareness and policy. This book serves as a source of information on the occurrence and impact of mycotoxins on everything from trade and health to agricultural production in addition to suggesting opportunities for their management in Africa and elsewhere by researchers, policy makers and development investors.
This book consists of 11 chapters, divided into four parts. The chapters are written by experts in the field of aflatoxins. Select topics are presented here to provide a snapshot of current understanding of the occurrence and metabolism of aflatoxin B1, the contamination, exposure, and detection of aflatoxin B1, and the toxicological effects and detoxification of aflatoxin. The book is intended for students and scientists working in the field of aflatoxins.
Food safety regulators face a daunting task: crafting food safety performance standards and systems that continue in the tradition of using the best available science to protect the health of the American public, while working within an increasingly antiquated and fragmented regulatory framework. Current food safety standards have been set over a period of years and under diverse circumstances, based on a host of scientific, legal, and practical constraints. Scientific Criteria to Ensure Safe Food lays the groundwork for creating new regulations that are consistent, reliable, and ensure the best protection for the health of American consumers. This book addresses the biggest concerns in food safetyâ€"including microbial disease surveillance plans, tools for establishing food safety criteria, and issues specific to meat, dairy, poultry, seafood, and produce. It provides a candid analysis of the problems with the current system, and outlines the major components of the task at hand: creating workable, streamlined food safety standards and practices.
Aflatoxins are a group of highly toxic and carcinogenic substances, which occur naturally, and can be found in food substances. Aflatoxins are secondary metabolites of certain strains of the fungi Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus and the less common A. nomius. Aflatoxins B1, B2, G1, and G2 are the most important members, which can be categorized into two groups according to the chemical structure. As a result of the adverse health effects of mycotoxins, their levels have been strictly regulated especially in food and feed samples. Therefore, their accurate identification and determination remain a Herculean task due to their presence in complex food matrices. The great public concern and the strict legislation incited the development of reliable, specific, selective, and sensitive analytical methods for pesticide monitoring that are discussed in this book.
Unlike physical losses, deterioration of food safety can be difficult to observe. In low- and middle- income countries, much of the food supply is never tested for safety hazards. We analyze data from 1500 maize samples and associated consumer surveys collected from clients of small-scale hammer mills in rural Kenya. We find that while visible damage to maize is penalized by lower prices, there is no correlation between price and aflatoxin, a carcinogenic fungal contaminant, implying an absence of market incentives to manage this aspect of food loss. Aflatoxin contamination is, however, correlated with consumer perceptions of quality, especially for self-produced maize, suggesting an information asymmetry that could lead to inefficiencies in this market.
This book is broadly divided into five sections and 17 chapters, highlighting recent advances in aflatoxin research from epidemiology to molecular genomics and control measures, biocontrol approaches, modern analytical techniques, economic concerns and underlying mechanisms of contamination processes. This book will update readers on several cutting-edge aspects of aflatoxins research with useful up-to-date information for mycologists, toxicologists, microbiologists, agriculture scientists, plant pathologists and pharmacologists, who may be interest to understanding of the impact, significance and recent advances within the field of of aflatoxins with a focus on control strategy.
This book provides information on the incidence of fungi and mycotoxins in some African countries, the health implications and possible intervention control strategies for mycotoxins in developing countries and in Africa in particular. It will therefore be of interest to students, educators, researchers and policy makers in the fields of medicine, agriculture, food science and technology, trade and economics. Food regulatory officers also have quite a lot to learn from the book. Although a lot of the generated data in the area of mycotoxicology are available to the developed world, information on the subject area from Africa is scanty and not usually available in a comprehensive form. This book attempts to address the gap. Being an open access book, it will be of great benefit to scientists in developing countries who have limited access to information due to lack of funds to pay or subscribe for high quality journals and data from commercial publishing and database companies.
