The Great Resignation began sweeping through U.S. workplaces in 2021, resulting in nearly 48 million workers quitting their jobs, according to an April 2022 article in Mashable. Surveys of workers revealed that their top reasons for leaving were better pay, improved benefits, a new career direction, or a better working environment. Nearly 30% of the U.S. workforce was impacted, and the trend continues into 2022 with no clear indication of when, or how, it might ease, according to 2022 research from Statista.

In addition, challenges involving supply chains, transportation, and price pressures are forcing food manufacturers to develop creative solutions that not only serve their immediate production needs but enable greater resiliency in the face of future challenges.

Food safety testing has often followed a predictable pattern: Regulatory, industry, and trade drivers may influence where and how testing takes place, but food manufacturers have long been proactive in developing strategic and tactical approaches to ensuring that food and beverages are nutritious and safe to consume. A closer look at the role that food safety holds across the food manufacturing life cycle can help identify areas in which small changes can significantly improve operational efficiency and worker satisfaction while maintaining the highest product quality and safety standards.

When a worker shortage and employee retention are hurting production as they are today, food processors may want to take a harder look at food safety testing technologies and methods that are easier on the bottom line and safer and easier for new workers to use.

Identifying Mycotoxin ­Contamination

Table 1. Mycotoxins commonly detected in food and agricultural products.

Produced by naturally occurring soil-borne molds, mycotoxins are highly toxic metabolites found in most field, orchard, and vine-grown crops (see Table 1). Heat stable and persistent, mycotoxins remain on crops after they’ve been harvested, stored, and processed. In fact, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that 25% of the world’s food crops are contaminated with mycotoxins. Recent studies suggest that contamination is more complex and involves the presence of multiple mycotoxins in a single raw material.

Aflatoxins are among the most widely known and highly regulated mycotoxins. Produced by Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus molds, aflatoxin B1 is classified as a Group I carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Additional mycotoxins of food safety importance include fumonisin, ochratoxin A, patulin, ergot alkaloids, alternaria, deoxynivalenol (DON), nivalenol, zearalenone, and the combination of T-2 and HT-2. Each mycotoxin, or family of toxins, carries a unique toxicity profile, and regulatory guidelines are reflective of the intended use for the product. For example, the EU regulatory limit for aflatoxin M1 in milk products is 0.05 parts per billion (ppb); however, milk used to manufacture infant formula must follow a much stricter limit of 0.025 ppb.

The type or level of mycotoxin contamination varies with each crop season; therefore, having a process in place for screening can help identify high-risk raw materials, suppliers, and geographic regions. Severe weather patterns, warm and humid storage conditions, or even late crop planting may contribute to the severity of mycotoxin contamination.

Once a mold begins producing toxin, the contamination may remain highly ­localized to a very small area within a crop field or in a “hot spot” inside a storage bin. A single grain or nut kernel may constitute 100% of the aflatoxin contamination in each lot or shipment, for example, indicating the need for thorough inspection and careful sampling, especially at harvest.

Table 2. Lateral flow strip tests have come a long way and are highly sensitive, as these data from a 10-minute multi-toxin test procedure show.

In regions where environmental conditions (such as high heat or humidity) are favorable to mold growth, vigilance is key. Routine “upstream” monitoring is common, helping quality managers to identify and reject unsafe raw materials before they are allowed on site for storage or processing. Once mycotoxins enter the processing stream, the risks of cross contamination or further toxin production by the resident mold are always present. Food recalls or litigation due to mycotoxin contamination can be costly; the average recall costs the food industry between $5 and $10 million/incident, including insurance claims, legal representation, brand, and immediate and long-term business losses. The upstream detection of mycotoxins in raw materials also enables food manufacturers to find alternative markets for an ingredient that may not be suitable for their application but may be just fine for animal feed formulation.

Advancing Mycotoxin Testing Technologies

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) generated an upsurge in the use of rapid testing technologies. FSMA’s focus on ­prevention has enabled more food companies to better understand where mycotoxins come from and to manage the mycotoxin contamination of raw materials before they reach the processing facility. Early detection, combined with the unique challenges of our shifting workforce, creates the need for technologies that are simple enough to be used by staff with or without technical training or expertise. Adopting simpler test procedures that don’t require organic solvents and that are helped by automated data management are key factors that improve productivity, worker satisfaction, and safety, while giving the food manufacturer a leg up in meeting their own sustainability objectives.

Traditional mycotoxin testing methods are showing their age for a number of basic reasons. Some call for organic solvents, such as methanol, to extract toxins for analysis, which is what makes water-based test methods very attractive. Other methods, like ELISA, rely on employees handling the actual toxins and hand pipetting prior to sample analysis, risking exposure. Proper storage and disposal of unused testing supplies is also a consideration.

Fewer steps reduce error, bringing greater accuracy and better overall performance to screening tests.

As we know, not all mycotoxin testing takes place in the field. Sometimes it’s necessary to send samples for confirmatory testing to an analytical laboratory where trained lab technicians test for mycotoxins on analytical instrumentation including high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), ultraperformance liquid chromatography (UPLC) and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry/mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). These techniques can be automated to detect and quantify as many as one hundred mycotoxins in a single run. Effective onboarding and retention of new laboratory staff members may require investing in up-to-date instruments or methods, exploring service plans, or upgrading data handling software. Investments like these create an environment where employees are encouraged to learn, grow, work, and hopefully build a career.

Building for the future is always a good plan. There is an incredible opportunity amid the Great Resignation to pause and take a closer look at the technologies we use for food safety testing, and how they impact the employee experience. When our teams and the testing technologies they depend on work well together, food safety testing can deliver the most value.

Jackson is VICAM market development manager for Waters Corporation. Reach her at patricia_jackson@waters.com.

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Mycotoxins pose a threat to food safety worldwide. Because they are considered among the most prominent and dangerous toxins that can affect any part of the food chain—from pre-harvest to food processing —prevention and mitigation of mycotoxin contamination is critical to protect consumers from the adverse health effects associated with these toxins.

“Mycotoxins, such as aflatoxins, are very toxic and present a significant health hazard to consumers,” says Hassan Gourama, PhD, associate professor of food science at Penn State Extension, College of Agricultural Sciences, at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.

With the potential to contaminate a variety of common foods, such as grains (corn, barley, wheat, rice, and oats), nuts, cocoa, and milk, mycotoxins present an ongoing challenge to food safety all along the food chain. The ideal way to mitigate their risk to food safety is to prevent these toxins from entering the food chain at all, and a number of pre-harvest strategies based on good agricultural practices (GAPs) can help.

Even with the best prevention strategies, however, mycotoxins can end up in the food chain given that they are ubiquitous worldwide and that ever-changing environmental conditions preclude strict elimination. “Mycotoxins are naturally occurring toxins found globally and cannot be controlled completely,” says Ronald Niemeijer, MSc, director of global marketing food and feed diagnostics at R-Biopharm AG in Darmstadt, Germany. “The weather conditions prior to harvest play a major role in the risk of mycotoxin production, and globalization of trade flows, as well as climate change, lead to the occurrence of unexpected mycotoxins in unusual products.”

Niemeijer stresses that once mycotoxins enter the food chain, it is nearly impossible to completely remove them during processing, as the toxins are chemically relatively stable. At this stage, detoxification is needed to reduce their level or to partially eliminate these toxins during the food processing stage.

This article describes what mycotoxins are, details the risk they pose to the food chain and human health, explains how to prevent these toxins from entering the food chain, and offers strategies to minimize their risk if they do.

Mycotoxins: Ubiquitous and Challenging

“Mycotoxins are naturally occurring compounds that contaminate food and feed around the world,” says Rebeca Lopez-Garcia, PhD, principal at Logre International Food Science Consulting in Mexico City, adding that the toxins are produced by molds, the most common of which are Aspergillus, Fusarium, and Penicillium.

According to a 2020 review of mycotoxins by Agriopoulou and colleagues, there are currently approximately 400 compounds identified as mycotoxins, and about 30 of these receive the most attention with regard to their threat to human and animal health. Table 1 lists the compounds of most concern, along with the food commodity at risk of contamination with a specific compound.

Among these groups of mycotoxins, aflatoxins are considered the most harmful to human and animal health, says Dr. Gourama. “Aflatoxins have many toxic effects, including acute toxicity, liver cancer, liver cirrhosis, and growth retardation,” he says, adding that symptoms of acute toxicity include abdominal complications, jaundice, pulmonary edema, coma, and death.

Along with the significant health impact, mycotoxins also have a significant economic impact; for example, the value of contaminated crops decreases considerably. “Producers may face export limitations, or lots may be even impossible to sell and have to be destroyed,” says Niemeijer.

As highlighted in the 2020 review by Agriopoulou and colleagues, other significant sources of economic loss include increases in production costs, lowered animal production, irregularity of production, regulatory enforcements, and the need for testing and other quality control measures. Data show that mycotoxin contamination of 25% of the world’s harvested crops costs billions in dollars annually.

Prevention: the First and Best Line of Defense

Once mycotoxins are in the food chain they are impossible to completely eradicate; therefore, prevention is critical. Pre-harvest practices can maintain the health of crops and reduce their susceptibility to fungal contaminants. Dr. Gourama cites several agronomic and management practices that can be applied to achieve this end, including reducing crop residues in the field from the previous harvest (as they can be the initial inoculum for the next crop), using proper irrigation and nutrition to keep crops healthy and less susceptible to fungal invasion, implementing crop rotation to reduce the level of fungal contamination in the field, and planting resistant crop varieties if possible.

Reducing mycotoxin risk at the harvesting stage, he says, includes harvesting grain and seed crops when their moisture content is at its lowest, removing damaged grains/fruits/seeds, and drying grains and seeds quickly once harvested. At the storage stage, moisture and insects need to be controlled and antifungal agents used.

Detoxification: Processing Level

Dr. Lopez-Garcia emphasizes that most mycotoxins are not destroyed or inactivated during processing, so the goal is to prevent highly contaminated products from entering the processing environment.

She recommends that food processors build adequate relationships with suppliers and develop specifications that address mycotoxins. “It’s important to understand each commodity coming into the processing facility and develop specifications that will address the potential contamination,” she says. “It is also important to have proper sampling and analytical methods in place, as sampling is extremely important to obtain reliable results, since some of the toxins may be present in hot spots.” To be valid, she says that samples should represent the whole lot.

She also stresses the need for vigilance in mitigating the risk of mycotoxin exposure in products targeted at infants and children.

Niemeijer also emphasizes the need for sample testing with an appropriate method to get an early indication of the mycotoxin status so that the right decision can be made before the next step in the production chain. “Before accepting a lot, the product can be tested to prevent mycotoxins entering the productions facilities,” he says. “Also, testing before shipping or exporting a product is a good strategy to prevent financial losses.”

Dr. Gourama underscores the need for food processors to obey all GMPs related to their products, particularly for products or ingredients susceptible to mold growth such as peanuts and corn. “Raw material and any incoming products should be checked for any signs of damage, mold growth, and presence of mycotoxins,” he says, adding that a proper cleaning and sanitizing program should always be followed throughout the processing facility to prevent food contamination with molds and potential production of mycotoxins.

Global Effort

Given the enormous impact mycotoxins can have on the food chain, regulatory limits on their levels in food and feed have been established by governing bodies worldwide, including FDA, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the Food Agricultural Organization, and the World Health Association.

Implementing a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points approach across the entire food chain and through all stages of food handling is another way to ensure the safety of foods and feed from mycotoxin contamination.

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Though concentrations of mycotoxins are low, the toxins themselves are widespread in the world of beer. And because they’re often stable organic molecules, mycotoxins are capable of surviving the heat of brewing and beer’s alcohol content. For that reason, scientists from the Laboratory of Organic Chemistry, Wageningen University, the Netherlands, published a report in the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry in early November chronicling their development of a portable sensor that determines the presence of mycotoxins in beer caused by fungal contamination to grains.

“At low concentrations, as far as we know now, there are no adverse effects,” explains Teris van Beek, PhD, one of the study’s authors, “However occasionally high concentrations of some mycotoxins have been detected in beer. Deoxynivalenol (Don) causes vomiting, and other mycotoxins can cause cancer or exhibit fairly acute toxicity.”

Dr. van Beek notes that mycotoxins are largely present in low concentrations, which means that most beer does not expose drinkers to an intolerable amount when it is consumed at average levels. Then again, with greater beer consumption comes increased threat of mycotoxin—alongside the threat the alcohol poses to the drinker’s liver.

Regardless of threat, Dr. van Beek says, it’s important to be informed about mycotoxin concentrations. “Not all beers contain equal amounts,” he explains. “Due to more extensive quality control, concentrations are likely to be lower in beers from large multinational breweries than in beers from small local breweries, or in home-made beers. The barley should be checked too!”

To date, the process of detecting and measuring mycotoxins has been quite expensive—both antibody-based and chromatography-based testing kits require substantial outlay, whether for expensive equipment or for investment, maintenance, and expertise. Dr. van Beek stresses that his team’s method has not yet been proven cheaper than existing methods, though he suspects that as the science of the testing develops and becomes picked up commercially, it may provide the capacity for cheaper detection than before.

“The technology is based on a novel type of surface plasmon resonance (SPR), which is an existing label-free technique that can sensitively measure the interactions between antibodies and antigens (such as mycotoxins) in real time,” Dr. van Beek explains. He notes that what makes his team’s work novel is that it is based on a nanostructured chip developed by the Italian company Plasmore, which participated in the project. “We have further developed and modified the chips, attached mycotoxins to the chips and tested them with beer. Due to the nanostructuring, the SPR apparatus can be 10 times smaller, 10 times less heavy, and 10 times cheaper than normal SPR instruments.”

The team has successfully used the chip to apply barley and finished beer, and though they have not yet completed testing on intermediate stages between the two, they expect it will work in those circumstances as well.

“In principle,” he says, “our method is generic and could be applied to any chemical for which antibodies are available, such as pollutants or drugs. The first application is not necessarily beer.”

He estimates that the science will take “a few more years” before it becomes commercially available.

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Image Credit: Clean Label Project.

Lead in drinking water and spices, and arsenic in rice and baby food are just a few of the more recent food safety issues. A few years farther back, it was the discovery of BPA in water bottles and the linings of food tins. It’s hard to know how to eat safely and produce food that consumers can rely upon to be free of harmful chemicals.

A new non-profit, Denver’s Clean Label Project, aims to arm consumers with the knowledge they need to avoid toxins in their food. An independent research group comprised of what Doug Porter, Clean Label Project’s Board Chair describes as “pediatricians, food scientists, concerned moms, dads, and people with non-profit backgrounds,” the organization coalesced around the desire to use clear science to help bridge the gap between worry and knowledge about toxins.

“There is a great deal of confusion that exists around marketing terminology and claims,” Porter says. “We believe parents shouldn’t need a PhD to know what’s in their family’s food. Our vision is to achieve a cleaner food supply for everyone.”

As such, Clean Label Project tests for arsenic, cadmium, lead, aluminum, nickel, BPA, antibiotics, pesticides, artificial colors, and sulfites. They are unaffiliated with any brand, retailer, or manufacturer, and aim to provide information about products across organic and conventional food production sectors. According to the Project’s press release, foods will be blind-tested in an accredited, independent lab, and data will be reviewed by “an advisory board of physicians, epidemiologists, and food scientists who analyze the risks of each tested substance using a proprietary algorithm.”

“The negative impacts from excess salt or sugar were more readily understood with issues like high blood pressure or diabetes increasing at an alarming rate,” Porter says of previous health concerns about food. “As a result, labeling information and guidelines were focused around those ingredients first. Toxins and contaminants are more complex to understand and can be very harmful over time.”

In response to this threat, Porter and his colleagues believe an informed public will be best prepared to confront the issues that strike fear into the hearts of consumers.

“We are only now beginning to understand the impact of not just what we add to foods, but also what gets into our food supply inadvertently,” says Porter. “The FDA and the EPA have already created regulations around a number of toxic contaminants. It is time now to apply emerging knowledge to not just avoid them, but to also proactively remove them from the food supply. As awareness grows in the marketplace of harmful contaminants in our food supply so too will demands for removing or avoiding them.”

Porter says Clean Label Project’s efforts aim to create a food supply that will be cleaner and “purer”—he defines “purity” in food as “scientifically determined to contain the lowest acceptable levels of potentially harmful contaminants.” With informed consumers increasingly choosing clean food over food that may contain toxins, Porter says, over time the public will begin to drive a shift toward less toxic products. Manufacturers will aim to meet that demand, and positive health outcomes will be unavoidable.

On the industry level, Porter says he knows that Clean Label Project may pose a challenge to producers comfortable with the status quo, but there has been little in the way of pushback so far.

“What we have encountered has been positive because the vast majority of producers know this is an important topic to address,” Porter says. “There is a significant difference among products in the same category—so we know that foods can be produced with lower toxins. It is a matter of adopting the best practices, using better sources, and understanding how and where the food is contaminated.”

However, he underlines that Clean Label Project is open to engaging with producers who may not understand their goals, and he says they will do their utmost to help educate the manufacturing sector about how clean food can be profitable as well as healthy.

In mid-September, Clean Label Project will release its inaugural “CLP Magnified List, Baby Food,” which will reflect testing of a variety of baby foods across price-points and categories.

After that, it will depend on reception—Clean Label Project wants to respond to feedback about the categories of food consumers wish to know more about, but making the information accessible is a high priority. The next steps will also include development of tools like a mobile app or a search bar on the Project website.

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As they struggle to deal with more extreme weather, a range of food crops are generating more of chemical compounds that can cause health problems for people and livestock who eat them, scientists have warned.

A new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says that crops, such as wheat and maize, are generating more potential toxins as a reaction to protect themselves from extreme weather.

But these chemical compounds are harmful to people and animals if consumed for a prolonged period of time, according to a report released during a United Nations Environment Assembly meeting in Nairobi.

“Crops are responding to drought conditions and increases in temperature just like humans do when faced with a stressful situation,” explained Jacqueline McGlade, chief scientist and director of the Division of Early Warning and Assessment at UNEP.

Under normal conditions, for instance, plants convert nitrates they absorb into nutritious amino acids and proteins. But prolonged drought slows or prevents this conversion, leading to more potentially problematic nitrate accumulating in the plant, the report said.

If people eat too much nitrate in their diets, it can interfere with the ability of red blood cells to transport oxygen in the body, the report said.

Crops susceptible to accumulating too much nitrate in times of stress include maize, wheat, barley, soybeans, millet, and sorghum, it said.

Drought, Then Rain
Some drought-stressed crops, when then exposed to sudden large amounts of rain that lead to rapid growth, in turn accumulate hydrogen cyanide, more commonly known as prussic acid, the report said.

Prussic acid, one of the ingredients used in some types of chemical warfare, interferes with oxygen flow in humans. Even short-term exposure can be debilitating for people, McGlade said.

Plants such as cassava, flax, maize, and sorghum are most vulnerable to dangerous prussic acid accumulation, the report said.

Cases of nitrate or hydrogen cyanide poisoning in humans were reported in Kenya in 2013 and in the Philippines in 2005, McGlade said. In Kenya, two children died in coastal Kilifi after eating cassava that had raised levels of prussic acid in it following extreme rainfall, according to local media reports.

Aflatoxins, molds that can affect plant crops and raise the risk of liver damage, cancer, and blindness, as well as stunting foetuses and infants, also are spreading to more areas as a result of shifting weather patterns as a result of climate change, scientists said.

McGlade said about 4.5 billion people in developing countries are exposed to aflatoxins each year, though the amounts are largely unmonitored, and the numbers are rising.

“We are just beginning to recognise the magnitude of toxin- related issues confronting farmers in developing countries of the tropics and sub-tropics,” the report noted.

“As warmer climate zones expand towards the poles, countries in more temperate regions are facing new threats,” it added.

In 2004, Kenya suffered severe outbreaks of aflatoxin poisoning, which affected more than 300 people and killed more than 100 following a prolonged drought, according to the International Livestock Research Institute.

Europe At Risk
The UNEP report said Europe will be at growing risk from aflatoxins in locally grown crops if global temperatures rise by at least 2 degrees Celsius. The world is currently on a path to a more than 3 degree Celsius temperature rise, scientists believe.

An increase in toxic compounds in crops is likely to impact heavily on the world’s health system, which are already struggling with the effects of food insecurity, Dorota Jarosinska of the World Health Organization’s European Center for Environment and Health said in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Alex Ezeh, executive director of the African Population Health and Research Center, said the increase in toxins in crops was a big concern.

“Toxic crops can lead to neurological diseases among humans but the greatest challenge is the incidence of cancer,” he said in an interview.

The report proposes a list of eight ideas farmers and agricultural experts can adopt to try to limit damage from more crop toxins, such as mapping contamination hotspots and building better evidence about what is happening now with the toxins in their area.

Scientists also suggest that developing crop varieties designed to cope with extreme weather could help reduce the levels of toxic chemicals in food.

“Research centers with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research are developing seeds that are suitable in various regions that have been hit by climate change,” McGlade said.

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