Current situation of Aflatoxins and Ochratoxins in animals feed and their health hazards (Review Article).

Moulds are capable of reducing the nutritional value of feed stuff as well as elaborating several mycotoxins. Mycotoxin-contaminated feed has adverse effects on animal health and productivity. Also, mycotoxins may be carried over into meat and eggs when poultry are fed with contaminated feed. The world requests for raw materials used in animal feed has been steadily rising in the last years driven by higher demands for livestock production. Mycotoxins are frequent toxic metabolites present in these raw materials. Which can be classified as hepatotoxins, nephrotoxins, neurotoxins, immunotoxins. Cell biologists put them into generic groups such as teratogens, mutagens, carcinogens, and allergens. Organic chemists have attempted to classify them by their chemical structures (e.g., lactones, coumarins); biochemists according to their biosynthetic origins (polyketides, amino acid-derived, etc.); physicians by the illnesses they cause (e.g., St. Anthony’s fire, stachybotryotoxicosis), and mycologists by the fungi that produce them (e.g., Aspergillus toxins, Penicillium toxins). None of these classifications is entirely satisfactoryThe exposure of farm animals to mycotoxins could result in undesirable residues in animal derived food products. Thus, the potential ingestion of edible animal products (milk, meat and fish) contaminated with mycotoxins constitutes a public health concern, since they enter the food chain and may cause adverse effects upon human.Aflatoxins (AFs), fumonisins (FBs), ochratoxin A (OTA), trichothecenes (TCs) and zearalenone (ZEN) are the most prevalent mycotoxins in animal feed, with aflatoxin M1 (AFM1) predominating in milk and dairy products, and OTA in meat by-products. The co-occurrence of mycotoxins in feed raw materials tends to be the rule rather than the exception, and the carry-over of mycotoxins from feed to animal source foods is more than proven.Extensive researches were made on mycotoxins which are commonly prevalent in majority of feed ingredients. A worldwide mycotoxin survey in 2013 revealed 81% of around 3,000 grain and feed samples analyzed had at least 1 mycotoxin, which was higher than the 10-year average (from 2004 to 2013) of 76% in a total of 25, 944 samples. The considerable increase in the number of positive samples in 2013 may be due to the improvements in detection methods and their sensitivity. Mycotoxins can affect the animals either individually or additively in the presence of more than 1 mycotoxin, and may affect various organs such as gastrointestinal tract, liver, and immune system, essentially resulting in reduced productivity of the birds and mortality in extreme cases.The present review, carried out in Egypt, provided additional information related to the occurrence and exposure assessment of afla-toxins and ochre-toxin A in feed in the last twenty years and available modern techniques to analyze them, the effects of myco-toxicoses and the recent developments in the ways to safely eliminate the mycotoxins from the feed.This prevalence review of Aflatoxin and Ochratoxin in feed stuff used for animal nutrition. The aim of the present review is to collect recent data on the occurrence of regulated Aflatoxins (AFs) and ochratoxin A in feed, and their carry-over into animal source foodstuffs.