Mycotoxins: A Managemental Guide for Animal Husbandry

Animal protein sources such as meat, egg and milk are complete proteins as they provide all essential amino acids in highest quality. To provide high quality protein to humans, livestock have to be fed with toxin free quality feedstuffs. Animal feed plays a major role in the global food industry, as it has highest returns to the producer throughout the world. Animal feeds are produced either by livestock farmers themselves locally or feed manufacturing companies. Feeds produced have to be secured and stored in a proper manner to avoid microbial as well as any other biotic agents. Mycotoxins are such naturally occurring toxin produced by the fungal growth. The molds can grow in any of the feed stuffs like maize, other cereals, Groundnut cake and other oil cakes in warm humid climatic conditions.

Mycotoxins can have variety of serious health hazards ranging from mild irritation to deadly cancers in livestock and humans. Addressing the issues related to mycotoxin is the need of the hour. With globalisation of the feed industry and rapid climatic changes, it is very difficult to enumerate the occurrence and presence of the toxin in the feedstuff. These unnoticeable toxin effects may have direct and indirect impact on animal production system. It is very essential to have adequate knowledge about the metabolism, growth and reproduction of various mycotoxins and the toxicological properties of their intermediate products produced during metabolism to neutralize these toxins.