Contamination by Aflatoxins B/G in Food and Commodities Imported in Southern Italy from 2017 to 2020: A Risk-Based Evaluation.

This study reports the results of aflatoxins B/G monitoring in food of vegetal origin, imported in Southern Italy from extra-European Union countries. From 2017 to 2020, we analyzed 1675 samples using an accredited HPLC method with fluorescence detection. We found out 295 samples (17.6%) were contaminated by aflatoxin B1, 204 by aflatoxins B/G (12.2%), while 75 (4.5%) resulted non-compliant to maximum limits set by the European Union law. Most of the batches tested were unprocessed food; the distribution of contamination levels, incidence of non-compliant samples, inference for different kinds of food are reported. The study focuses on the food more susceptible to contamination by aflatoxins; nuts are the food more controlled, showing the higher number of non-compliant samples. Our study confirms that pistachio nuts, hazelnuts and almonds are the major sources of exposure for consumers. Still, other products, such as chili pepper and Brazil nuts, need to get more information about their contamination levels. The study's findings are discussed in the perspective of the last opinion by EFSA about chronic exposure to aflatoxins. A case study to evaluate not compliance of a composed food to the European Union law is reported.

T-2 and HT-2 toxins in feed and food from Southern Italy, determined by LC-MS/MS after immunoaffinity clean-up.

A method to determine T-2 and HT-2 toxins, both in feed and food, is described. The method is based on sample clean-up by immunoaffinity columns, followed by triple quadrupole LC-MS/MS determination. It was in-house validated in compliance with the European Union legislation, in the concentration range 5.0-750 µg kg-1 and accredited according to the ISO/IEC 17025 standard, for the scope of official control of feed and food. The method was applied to monitor the contamination levels of T-2 and HT-2 toxins in 105 feed samples, both raw materials and compound feed and 17 cereals and derived products for human consumption, collected in Southern Italy between 2015 and 2019. T-2 toxin was quantified in 32 feed (30.5%) and in 2 food samples (11.8%). HT-2 toxin was quantified in 65 feed (61.9%) and in 3 food (17.6%) samples.

Monitoring the Presence of Domoic Acid in the Production Areas of Bivalve Molluscs.

Algal biotoxins, chemical compounds produced by some microscopic algae, constitute the phytoplankton. The mussels, feeding on phytoplankton, can accumulate these compounds to become themselves toxic. There have been several cases of food poisoning by consumption of contaminated shellfish. Such food poisoning have pushed our health care system to provide monitoring of shellfish in the framework of the monitoring plans carried out by AASSLL. In this paper we report the results obtained monitoring the presence of amnesic shellfish poisoning biotoxins, like domoic acid and its isomers, produced by Pseudonitzschia algae. The analyses were carried out by using both the high-performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet official method and an experimental method performed with a time-of-flight mass spectrometer (ESI-TOF). The 100% of samples analysed by the official method have always been below the limits of sensitivity (except one sample), and the 65% of samples analysed by ESI-TOF showed the presence of domoic acid.