BIOMIN Gains Further Insight into Poultry Producers' Mycotoxin Challenges
GLOBAL - The real effects of mycotoxins on poultry health and the knowledge of their toxicity are still being discovered. Work is ongoing and mycotoxin management is increasingly seen as a key component of producer's poultry health programs given the numerous potential impacts on production.
8 February 2017
3 minute read
By: BIOMIN is working closely with customers in North America and across the globe, using the latest scientific developments and data to help address problems and improve poultry producers' profitability.
On the sidelines of the recent IPPE 2017, held in Atlanta, Georgia, Feedinfo News Service was able to talk to Raj Murugesan, Technical & Marketing Director of BIOMIN America, and Ursula Hofstetter, Head of Global Product Management Mycotoxins at BIOMIN.
[Feedinfo News Service] BIOMIN is gaining a better understanding of the toxicity of emerging mycotoxins in vitro in order to identify which may cause problems in livestock. What are your latest findings?
[Ursula Hofstetter] We conduct the BIOMIN Mycotoxin Survey each year since 2004 using advanced multi-mycotoxin methods, such as LC-MS/MS based Spectrum 380® which detects more than 380 mycotoxins and metabolites. Crops contain many more different mycotoxins and other secondary fungal metabolites than the well-known (regulated) mycotoxins: aflatoxin B1, deoxynivalenol, T-2 toxin, zearalenone, fumonisin B1, and ochratoxin. The development of analytical methods to detect emerging (unregulated) mycotoxins is more advanced than the knowledge of their toxicity. There’s reason to suspect that some of the emerging mycotoxins play some kind of role in livestock, since in vivo trials using naturally contaminated feed consistently show greater negative effect on the animals than those using artificially contaminated feed. This indicates that these other mycotoxins add to the overall toxicity. The initial focus of the project is to screen these less understood but common metabolites for their toxic effects. According to the progress made so far, the emerging mycotoxins that merit further scrutiny include: moniliformin (for which an EFSA scientific opinion is expected), sterigmatocystin (undergoing a safety assessment by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives), fusaproliferin, fusaric acid, alternariol and tenuazonic acid (which is thought to interfere with protein synthesis in poultry).
