EU food risk tool highlights carcinogenic toxins in food chain

A food safety tool to help member states track food risks across Europe, the rapid alert system for food and feed (RASFF​) noted 18 separate cases of the potentially carcinogenic toxin aflatoxins in foods.

Mycotoxins, to which aflatoxins belong, are naturally-occurring toxins produced by certain fungi that, under certain environmental conditions, can grow on various foods, such as cereals, nuts, dried fruits, apples and legumes.

In contrast to other mycotoxins, Europe has no Tolerable Daily Intake (TDI) for aflatoxins because they have been shown to cause cancer in the liver of laboratory animals by damaging DNA.

Aflatoxin B1 is the most toxic.

But despite European rules banning their presence, last week nearly half of the total 53 alerts came from the detection of aflatoxin in nuts.

Nut products contaminated included: pistachios, groundnut kernels, shelled hazelnuts, and shelled brazil nuts.

They hailed from a range of countries, notably Brazil, china, India, Iran, Paraguay and South Africa.

Food makers and retailers need to tighten the testing grip on imported foods. High levels of exposure to these mycotoxins have been found to cause a range of adverse health effects, potentially carcinogenic and mutagenic (damage genes) in laboratory animals.

There is concern that similar effects may occur in humans through long-term consumption of foods and beverages that contain relatively high levels of these contaminants.

They have also been linked to liver cancer in a number of developing countries, where some foods that are an important part of the diet can contain high levels of these genotoxic carcinogens.

Confirming the need for a unified food risk tracking system, the number of food-linked alerts in the European Union leapt by over forty per cent in 2003 on the previous year, with the majority sourced in the 'old' member states.