Presence of Aflatoxin Carcinogens in Fresh and Mature Cheeses

Cheese has a high nutritional value so it is considered an essential food in the human diet. This review considered 27 countries with 59 different kinds of cheeses highly consumed per person, with France and the USA as the largest consumers with 26 kg and 15 kg per inhabitant per year, respectively. Mexico has a consumption of 2.1 kg per capita in a year. The presence of aflatoxins in cheeses represents a risk for human health because the International Agency for the Research of Cancer (IARC) classified them as Grade I, meaning that they are proven carcinogens to humans. Almost all of the countries reported aflatoxin M1 in cheese, and only Mexico analyzed eight different aflatoxins and hydroxylates in this dairy product. It is also important to analyze the hydroxylate metabolites of aflatoxins because they are also carcinogenic and they increase the amount of ingested carcinogens in cheese samples, allowing us to obtain the real ingested dose.