Articles -

Recommendations to facilitate the adoption of non-targeted mass spectrometry-based methods in food authenticity assessments.      Introduction Food authenticity is one of the major concerns of producers, consumers, and regulators. Today it is important to verify that food package labelling corresponds to the actual characteristics of [...]

Alongside other current industrial approaches, next-generation sequencing (NGS) plays an important role in addressing food fraud and ensuring food authenticity.     Introduction Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has been primarily associated with work in academia and work in human health-related fields. The insulation of NGS within these f [...]

Analytical science, both in chemistry and microbiology, has seen a drastic technical evolution in recent years. It’s possible to test for analytes with very little knowledge about them. And this is where things start to get difficult. Just because one can test for something, should one test for it? And why? Which actions, if any, should be taken [...]

During the first wave of COVID-19 here in Italy where about 30 000 people died in just a few weeks, many new — and a few weird — things happened. Scientists and laboratories started looking for the virus in the air and in airborne microparticles (a good idea), in sewage (a good idea), and on food packaging and in food itself (a much les [...]

First of all, I want to express my joy to be here again. Italy, as you all certainly know, was the first Western country affected by Covid-19 after the outbreak in China. At this point, we have had 35 000 deaths in Italy and for a few weeks in some parts of northern Italy hospitals had difficulties caring for all of the sick people. The lockdown, t [...]

Are regulatory limits a good compromise between public health and economic interests?     The EU undoubtedly has the strictest mycotoxin regulations in the world. The complex and supposedly well-structured system that enforces these regulations and guarantees the highest level of safety for EU citizens actually has some weak points and ev [...]

An overview of the last ten years of notifications related to food contaminated with mycotoxins.     In order to protect food consumers and livestock, mycotoxin levels in food and feed need to be controlled because they have toxic properties that can sometimes cause chronic negative health effects (Bhat et al. 2010; Wild and Gong 2010). W [...]

Whether it is an administrative case or a criminal case, the consequences for noncompliance in the preparation and handling of foodstuffs and feedstuffs appear to vary widely. We interviewed four legal experts in the field.The problem of safety of use in the cereal chain is primarily linked to mycotoxin contamination. ochratoxin A (OTA), zearalenon [...]

Affidia interviewed two of the principle players in testing inspection and certification of grain shipments to learn how real investigations are conducted and to understand the unmet challenges in this field.Globalization has increased the international circulation of commodities. For some of these commodities, globalization has meant the establish [...]

Unsafe foods incidents occur for many reasons and can lead to public health issues, sales losses, and harm to a company’s reputation. The response to unsafe food crises requires careful methods and precise procedures.     Food businesses are placing more and more emphasis on quality and safety control and on the traceability of prod [...]

One of the most expensive nuts is sometimes contaminated by aflatoxin at levels above EU regulatory limits. Here we try to understand to what extent the dramatic decrease in Iranian pistachio border rejections has been due to the change in regulatory limits.     The origin of the word pistachio comes from the Persian word pesteh. Iran has [...]

Ukraine, one of the world’s largest grain exporters, faces mycotoxin-related challenges in an expanding export market. This article explains how grain stakeholders in Ukraine conduct mycotoxin risk management, which analysis methods they use, and why they choose them.     The impact of mycotoxins on human health and on the economy M [...]

A changing environment and ambitious plans to ramp up wheat exports pushes Russian veterinary watchdog Rosselhoznadzor to enhance control over the presence of mycotoxins in grain.Rosselkhoznadzor is currently designing a new traceability system to ensure exported grain is free of mycotoxins. Russia needs to tighten control over the quality of expor [...]

A survey to investigate topics including the technologies used, the number of analyses conducted, and the test kits’ certifications.Rapid testing for grainAflatoxin and deoxynivalenol (DON) contamination of grain depends on several factors, primary among them weather conditions in the pre-harvest period. In Europe, aflatoxin in corn is mostly a p [...]

Abstract – Ochratoxin A has been regulated in Europe since 2006, with the first official risk assessment dating back to 1994. There have been many efforts over the years in the agro-food system to control, monitor, and mitigate its occurrence in food commodities. However, the recent scientific evaluation of EFSA shed light on several still-op [...]