> Dog and cat foods recalled, containing high levels of aflatoxin. -Rhonda
>
> http://www.diamondpetrecall.com/index.p
> > Dog and cat foods recalled, containing high levels of aflatoxin. -Rhonda
> >
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>
> what is this...can i catch this?
No you can't "catch it", but you can be affected - see below.
PROPERTIES OF AFLATOXIN AND IT PRODUCING FUNGI
Reddy,S.V. and Farid Waliyar
Many agricultural commodities are vulnerable to attack by a group of
fungi that are able to produce toxic metabolites called mycotoxins.
Among various mycotoxins, aflatoxins have assumed significance due to
their deleterious effects on human beings, poultry and livestock. The
aflatoxin problem was first recognized in 1960, when there was severe
outbreak of a disease referred as "Turkey 'X' Disease" in UK, in which
over 100,000 turkey poults died. The cause of the disease was shown due
to toxins in peanut meal infected with Aspergillus flavus and the
toxins were named as aflatoxins.
Natural occurrence:
Food products contaminated with aflatoxins include cereal (maize,
sorghum, pearl millet, rice, wheat), oilseeds (groundnut, soybean,
sunflower, cotton), spices (chillies, black pepper, coriander,
turmeric, ginger), tree nuts (almonds, pistachio, walnuts, coconut) and
milk.
http://www.aflatoxin.info/aflatoxin.asp
Aflatoxin is a known issue, it's been a problem for decades and it is
NOT restricted to corn. It can occur in rice, wheat, sorghum, oilseeds
(groundnut, soybean, sunflower, cotton), spices (chillies, black
pepper, coriander, turmeric, zinger), tree nuts (almonds, pistachio,
walnuts, coconut) and milk.
Aflatoxin is also not the only similar mold and fungus born toxin.
Vomitoxin is another similar problem which struck Nature's Recipe in
the late 90's. It is also possible that Pet Curean's Go! Natural was
similarly contaminated early last year and caused the deaths of several
dogs in the San Francisco Bay area. Neither of these products
contained corn. Purina in Venezuela and Mars/Royal Canin/Masterfoods in
Malaysia also apparently got caught with a grain based toxin in this
past year.
The problem is really very simple to control, and most major pet food
companies control it with ease. It simply requires that incoming lots
of grains be tested for the presence of the toxin. I would expect that
all the major manufacturers in this country routinely require vendors
provide testing results of all such incoming raw ingredients and then
spot check the vendors submitted testing results to keep the vendors on
thier toes. The same holds true of all raw ingredients. Every raw
ingredient has the capacity to have some kind of contamination problem.
When we look at fish - we have to be thinking - and testing for heavy
metals, mercury, PCB's etc. When we deal with grains we have to be
testing for molds and thier toxins. This should be a routine activity
for every pet food company. The process is expensive however. Vendors
pass on the costs of such testing to the manufacturer and the
manufacturer has costs in running their own tests to verify the
vendors.