Mycotoxins: The threat to food safety

Food safety is the practices that ensure food does not cause harm whereas food safety hazard is any factor found in food that has potential threat or causes harm to the consumer, by causing injury or illness. Mycotoxins are significant food safety hazards representing a major threat to human and animal health. They are naturally occurring chemical hazards that can produce by certain genera of fungi, Asperigllus, Fusarium, and Penicillium as secondary metabolites. The major types of mycotoxins that have great effects on food safety and human health are aflatoxins, ochratoxins, patulin, fumonisins, zearalenone, and trichothecenes. Mycotoxins are very stable molecules and their occurrence in food can be pre- or post-harvest stages. Prevention is an important strategy to control mycotoxins and should be achieved in pre-harvest and during storage stages, in both raw materials and processed food. Also, there are many methods for decontamination or detoxification which applied to food or feed contaminated with mycotoxins, without affecting the quality, the properties, or the safety of the food or feed. Continuous programs should be established to monitor the mycotoxins levels in food products during storage, distribution, and marketing to prevent any adverse effects on food safety and rather consumer health. Different methods were used for mycotoxins determination in food and feed such as TLC, HPLC, HPLC-MS, HPLC-MS/MS, and GC-MS. This review highlights chemistry, sources, occurrence, stability, prevention and control strategies, detection methods, and legislation of the most important mycotoxins with special reference to the international and Egyptian standards.