Aflatoxin and its Public Health Significance: A Review

Abstract

Aflatoxins are a group of mycotoxins produced by certain fungi, especially Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. Aflatoxicosis is a condition caused by aflatoxin in both animals and humans. The contamination of food and feed with aflatoxin has serious health consequence in animal and humans as well as economic impacts especially in developing countries. Aflatoxin M1 is stable in raw milk and processed milk products and is unaffected by pasteurization or processing into cheese and yogurt. The ability of this toxin to induce cancer in experimental animals and the relatively large consumption of milk by children has made in food contaminant of worldwide concern. Aflatoxin exposure is mainly problem in poor and developing countries with poor regulation authority in food processing, storage and weather condition as well as with high level malnutrition all species of animal are susceptible to aflatoxicosis. Although we can control and eradicate the incidence of aflatoxin by using different strategy. A primary strategy should aim to eliminate aflatoxins by reducing mould proliferation during Cultivation and storage and also different methods are used to decontaminate food and feed before ingestion. Different methods for detection and quantification of aflatoxins have been employed in this document for agricultural food crops and feeds have been explored. While chromatographic methods such as TLC, HPLC and ELISA are thus the most widely used techniques in aflatoxins analysis.