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The purpose of this study was to determine the incidence and concentrations of aflatoxin M1 (AFM1) in raw buffalo milk samples obtained from four different seasons: winter, spring, summer and autumn in Sohag City, upper Egypt, and compared the determined findings against the several regulations regarding AFM1 that have been legislated by the European Union, US Food and Drug Administration and Egyptian Regulations.

Simultaneous determination of aflatoxins in raw buffalo milk samples trailed in different seasons, in Sohag City, Egypt. The aflatoxin that has been included in this survey is AFM1. Milk samples were obtained from February to October 2021. The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was used as a methodology technique.

The results of AFM1 presented the highest frequency of occurrence, with a detected incidence of 85.5% in winter samples, 64.2% in spring samples, 78.5% in summer samples and 78.5% in autumn samples. The positive samples showed concentration range levels of AFM1 between 0.0 and 0.9 µg/kg (12 samples) in winter samples, 0.03 and 1.2 µg/kg in spring milk samples (9 samples), 0.06 and 0.8 µg/kg in summer milk samples (11 samples) and lasted with 0.028 and 0.9 µg/kg in autumn milk samples (11 samples). The percentage of AFM1samples exceeded the maximum residues limit of Egyptian Standard Regulation 2010/7136 last updated, 78%, 57%, 100% and 64% in the four examined seasons, respectively.

The residue levels of AFM1 obtained in the investigated samples represented a serious concern about the health risk of consumers. Milk is introduced to the diet plan all over the people units especially the offspring ones as it is a complete food that contains a lot of important nutrients. So it is worth to set a regular schedule for monitoring and inspection of dairy products for aflatoxin residues.

The purpose of this paper is to detect total aflatoxin (AFT) in domestic and imported tea in Amol (north of Iran).

A total of 42 tea samples including 21 domestic and 21 imported tea samples of three popular commercial brands were purchased from retail stores and analyzed for estimation of AFT by ELISA technique. Data were analyzed by ANOVA using SPSS software.

All of the tea samples were contaminated with detectable amount of AFT ranging from 1.5‐16.5 ng/g. The average±SD concentration of AFT in domestic and imported samples was 7.1±2.96 and 6.11±3.94 ng/g, respectively, which is lower than national and EU standards (10 ng/g). The AFT content in 9.5 and 14.3 percent of domestic and imported samples was more than the limited concentration, respectively. There was no significant difference in AFT content of samples of different commercial brands (p>0.05).

No research had been done to detect and compare the AFT content of domestic and imported tea in Iran.

Food safety is among the most important topics in the world. According to WHO guidelines, aflatoxins are one of the most hazardous food toxins. Therefore, their detection in food products seems crucial due to health problems. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the different types of biosensors in aflatoxin determination.

Traditional detection methods are time consuming and expensive. As fast and accurate detection is important in monitoring food contaminants, alternative analytical methods would be essential. Biosensors are the intelligent design of sensitive sensors for precise detection of toxins in a short time. Various biosensors are being applied for aflatoxins detection in food products with many advantages over the traditional methods.

Biosensors are cost-effective, stable and have possessed high selectivity, specificity and accuracy in aflatoxins detection. Applying biosensors has been increased recently, so biosensing methods (optical, electrochemical, piezoelectrical, immunosensors, surface plasmon resonance and calorimetric) are discussed along with their advantages in this article.

More efforts should be occurred to detect and decrease the aflatoxins by biosensors, and some traits like accuracy and selectivity would be the purpose of future projects. The combination of various techniques would also help in toxin detection issue in food products, so high efforts in this regard are also required for the upcoming years.

This article also reviews different types of biosensors simultaneously and explains their specificity for aflatoxin determination in different food products and also the future trends and requirements.

A survey of the market diseases and aflatoxin contamination of tomato fruits was conducted in Sokoto in northwestern Nigeria in 2001 and 2002, respectively. Rotten tomato fruits sold at five different markets in Sokoto town, located at Central market, Kasuwar daji, Mabera, Minanata and Arkilla were heavily contaminated with moulds. Eight different fungi were found associated with the rotten tomato fruits sold in the five different markets. The associated fungi were Aspergillus niger, Aspergillus ochraceous, Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus fumigatus, Penicillium citrinum and Helminthosporim fulvum, Curvularia lunata and Sclerotium rolfsii. A. flavus and A. niger have the highest rate of occurrence among the isolated fungi, while S. rolfsii was the least encountered. Pathogenicity tests revealed that of all the isolated fungi, A. ochraceous, A. flavus, Sclerotium rolfsii and P. citrinum were highly pathogenic with the first three leading to rapid disintegration of treated fruits in 3‐5 days. A. niger was moderately pathogenic, while H. fulvum was least pathogenic on tomato fruits. Aflatoxins were detected from the sampled diseased‐marketed tomato fruits and also from the marketed rotten tomato fruits after autoclaving for 15 minutes at 121°C.

This paper aims to provide information on the different methods of aflatoxin (AFT) degradation in rice.

Crops that are affected by AFT contamination include cereals, oilseeds, spices and tree nuts. AFT in rice may harm health to great extent, and if not properly determined, may cause death. The production and occurrence of mycotoxins differ depending on the geographic and climatic and environmental conditions; however, these toxicants can never be removed completely from the food supply.

Mycotoxins are commonly present in cereal grains such as rice and are not completely destroyed during their cooking and processing.

No review on detoxification of AFT has been found in rice.

Mycotoxins have been a frequent topic of newspaper reports over the past year exciting such headlines as ‘liver cancer toxin fear in figs’, ‘health store's peanuts could give you cancer’ and ‘peanut cancer test developed by firm’. So, what are these mycotoxins and how much should they be feared?

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate safety of the enzymatic treatment (garlic peroxidase) for removing aflatoxin B₁ (AFB₁) from foods.

An in vivo study was carried out on male wistar rats for three weeks. Since AFB₁ is a hepatotoxic; the effect of AFB₁ and the enzymatic detoxification of AFB₁ on the liver function was studied by determining the serum activities of various hepatic enzymes in different groups of experimental rats.

The peroxidase (POD) isolated from garlic possess AFB₁ degrading properties and the overall detoxification is safe to be used in various foods/feeds as the reaction products produced no toxicity in the adult male wistar rats. Rats fed with aflatoxin contaminated diet possessed increased activities of all the hepatic enzymes investigated; showing symptoms of liver damage compared to rats fed with enzyme treated diet.

The results of this study can be utilized for commercialization of the garlic POD mediated AFB₁ detoxification from feeds/foods.

The aflatoxin detoxyfying abilities of garlic POD and its in vivo safety studies have not been reported so far.

Samples of dry‐roasted groundnuts purchased from street hawkers, markets and retail shops in southwestern Nigeria were analysed for moisture content, fungal populations and aflatoxin contamination. The moisture content varied from 2.1 to 3.6 per cent, while the mould counts using the dilution plating method ranged from 2.9 × 10² to 6.3 × 10² colony‐forming units per gram in samples. Aflatoxin B₁ was found in 64.2 per cent of samples with a mean of 25.5 ppb. Aflatoxins B_2, G₁ and G₂ were detected in 26.4, 11.3 and 2.8 per cent of the samples with mean levels of 10.7, 7.2 and 8 ppb respectively in contaminated samples. It is concluded that the regular consumption of DRG by Nigerians might present potential health hazards.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the current situation of multidimensional food safety assurance in Serbia, as an official candidate for European Union (EU) membership, in relation to its EU food law harmonization efforts.

Serbian assurance scheme was covered in this paper included food safety legislation, control and standards.

The food safety system in Serbia needs improvements in the area of effectiveness and efficiency of food safety control and inspection services, knowledge and expertise of state inspectors, governmental officials, food safety consultants and auditors. Additionally, problems related to the overlapping responsibilities of various legal authorities and inspection services have to be solved, with an improved transparency and communication between legal authorities, customers, consumers and food business operators.

An overview of current situation in food safety assurance in Serbia is shown.