Abstract
Aflatoxins are wide-spread harmful carcinogenic secondary metabolites produced by Aspergillus species, which cause serious feed and food contaminations and affect farm animals deleteriously with acute or chronic manifestations of mycotoxicoses. On farm, both pre-harvest and post-harvest strategies are applied to minimize the risk of aflatoxin contaminations in feeds. The great economic losses attributable to mycotoxin contaminations have initiated a plethora of research projects to develop new, effective technologies to prevent the highly toxic effects of these secondary metabolites on domestic animals and also to block the carry-over of these mycotoxins to humans through the food chain. Among other areas, this review summarizes the latest findings on the effects of silage production technologies and silage microbiota on aflatoxins, and it also discusses the current applications of probiotic organisms and microbial products in feeding technologies. After ingesting contaminated foodstuffs, aflatoxins are metabolized and biotransformed differently in various animals depending on their inherent and acquired physiological properties. These mycotoxins may cause primary aflatoxicoses with versatile, species-specific adverse effects, which are also dependent on the susceptibility of individual animals within a species, and will be a function of the dose and duration of aflatoxin exposures. The transfer of these undesired compounds from contaminated feed into food of animal origin and the aflatoxin residues present in foods become an additional risk to human health, leading to secondary aflatoxicoses. Considering the biological transformation of aflatoxins in livestock, this review summarizes (i) the metabolism of aflatoxins in different animal species, (ii) the deleterious effects of the mycotoxins and their derivatives on the animals, and (iii) the major risks to animal health in terms of the symptoms and consequences of acute or chronic aflatoxicoses, animal welfare and productivity. Furthermore, we traced the transformation and channeling of Aspergillus-derived mycotoxins into food raw materials, particularly in the case of aflatoxin contaminated milk, which represents the major route of human exposure among animal-derived foods. The early and reliable detection of aflatoxins in feed, forage and primary commodities is an increasingly important issue and, therefore, the newly developed, easy-to-use qualitative and quantitative aflatoxin analytical methods are also summarized in the review.
Highlights
Mycotoxins are harmful secondary metabolites produced by a variety of mold species that represent serious health risks to both humans and household animals (Beardall and Miller, 1994) and, not surprisingly, they cause both acute and chronic diseases called mycotoxicoses
We focus on special parts of the feed and food chain like silage production and mitigation of mycotoxins by microbial products
The results showed that the inoculation of corn silage with L. buchneri and L. hilgardii increased the aerobic stability and delayed the beginning of aerobic microbial degradation of maize silage, and indirectly reduced the risk of A. flavus emergence and aflatoxin B1 level after silage opening
Summary
Mycotoxins are harmful secondary metabolites produced by a variety of mold species that represent serious health risks to both humans and household animals (Beardall and Miller, 1994) and, not surprisingly, they cause both acute and chronic diseases called mycotoxicoses. The chronic pathological conditions develop over a longer period of time through the consumption of both cereals and animal products, e.g., milk, meat, and eggs. They represent a risk factor to human health directly in the food chain and through biological transformations as well. One of the major objectives of current investigations is the breeding and cultivation of novel plant varieties/hybrids more resistant to infections by mycotoxin producer fungi Another major goal focuses on the accuracy of the storage of crops and crop products, especially silage, to control the production of mycotoxins more tightly (Driehuis et al, 2018; Ogunade et al, 2018; Glamocicet al., 2019).
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