INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO COUNTERACT MYCOTOXINS IN THE FOOD CHAIN

In the recent years, mycotoxins have undoubtedly gained a keen interest of the scientific community studying food safety. Yearly surveys demonstrate that mycotoxin contamination in foods and feeds represent a worldwide public health issue. Analytical progress demonstrates that this problem can be more important than previously estimated due to the presence of masked and/or modified toxins that were not taken into account. Global climatic changes also make the situation more complex, leading to the appearance of known toxins in areas that were considered as not present (i.e., aflatoxin B1 in maize in Central Europe). Therefore, there is a stringent need to look for new strategies to limit mycotoxin contamination. Mycotoxin detoxifying agents represent very promising alternatives for addressing the ever growing dilemma of mycotoxin contamination in food and feed commodities. These agents are a relatively new category of feed additives that comprise a very heterogeneous group, from substances adsorbing mycotoxins (such as clay minerals or yeast derivatives) to those that biotransform them (e.g. microbial strains or enzyme preparations). Until today, only a few feed legislations allow the authorization (and therefore, the marketing) of mycotoxin deactivators as such. In the European Union (EU), there was no regulatory framework for the authorization of the mycotoxin detoxifying agents until 2009. Therefore, products having only a mycotoxin-detoxifying claim were effectively banned from the market until then. The situation changed with the publication of Commission Regulation (EC) No 386/2009 establishing a new functional group of feed additives: substances for reduction of the contamination of feed by mycotoxins. However, even with this regulation in place, only three such products have been authorized in the EU to date. This presentation aims at up-dating the state of knowledge in the field of mycotoxins detoxification in feed, including efficacy testing and legislative changes in the light of recent findings and recommendations