Mycotoxin Testing In Animal Feeds – Veterinary Public Health Laboratory’s Experience

Suhaimi Dollah & Wan Syahidah Hussain

Animal feed safety in Malaysia is becoming an important criteria where mycotoxins are considered to be among the most significant hazards at international level of trade. Determination of aflatoxins, fumonisins, ochratoxins and others in animal feeding stuffs by Veterinary Public Health Laboratory did not depend much on how the samples were brought to the laboratories by the senders, but as received basis for analysis. Based on the compiled data, inconsistent results produced for the past 10 years have made the real situation of occurrences of mycotoxins in animal feedstuffs as inconclusive. Animal consumption of mycotoxin-contaminated crops may cause adverse health effects where proper laboratory results representing a national concern for the livestock industry must be consistently reliable. Mycotoxin growth normally non-uniform making the sampling protocol become more vital than sampling of more homogeneous compounds for quality testing. Step to obtain representative sample accounts for the greatest source of error since the analytes under discussion often appear in trace levels .