Aflatoxin in Agricultural Commodities and Herbal Medicine

Abstract

Research on Cancer (IARC) (Seo, Min, Kweon, Park, & Park, 2011).Aflatoxicosis may cause death in ruminants (Pierezan, et al., 2010).Despite extensive research done during the last few decades, which helped authorities around the world to establish control measures, still aflatoxin contamination in food and agricultural commodities remains as one of the most challenging and serious food safety problem.Close study of the annual reports in the last decade (2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009) of the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) showed four aforementioned groups contributed to the most aflatoxin contamination.Although, one should be careful in jumping to a bigger conclusion as these data also depends on the policy of EU countries, on products that go on a 100% check and those checked randomly.The detailed results are included in Table 1.Literature review by Vinod Kumar, M.S. Basu, T.P. Rajendran ( 2008) on the incidence of mycotoxins in some commercially important agricultural commodities concluded that highrisk commodities for mycotoxin contamination were corn and groundnut (Kumar, Basu, & Rajendran, 2008).Year Total nuts, nut products & seeds fruit & vegetables cereal products herbs & spices feed for food producing animals pet food