Aflatoxins are wide-spread harmful carcinogenic secondary metabolites produced by
Aspergillus species, which cause serious feed and food contaminations and affect farm
animals deleteriously with acute or chronic manifestations of mycotoxicoses. On farm,
both pre-harvest and post-harvest strategies are applied to minimize the risk of aflatoxin
contaminations in feeds. The great economic losses attributable to mycotoxin contaminations
have initiated a plethora of research projects to develop new, effective technologies
to prevent the highly toxic effects of these secondary metabolites on domestic animals
and also to block the carry-over of these mycotoxins to humans through the food chain.
Among other areas, this review summarizes the latest findings on the effects of silage
production technologies and silage microbiota on aflatoxins, and it also discusses
the current applications of probiotic organisms and microbial products in feeding
technologies. After ingesting contaminated foodstuffs, aflatoxins are metabolized
and biotransformed differently in various animals depending on their inherent and
acquired physiological properties. These mycotoxins may cause primary aflatoxicoses
with versatile, species-specific adverse effects, which are also dependent on the
susceptibility of individual animals within a species, and will be a function of the
dose and duration of aflatoxin exposures. The transfer of these undesired compounds
from contaminated feed into food of animal origin and the aflatoxin residues present
in foods become an additional risk to human health, leading to secondary aflatoxicoses.
Considering the biological transformation of aflatoxins in livestock, this review
summarizes (i) the metabolism of aflatoxins in different animal species, (ii) the
deleterious effects of the mycotoxins and their derivatives on the animals, and (iii)
the major risks to animal health in terms of the symptoms and consequences of acute
or chronic aflatoxicoses, animal welfare and productivity. Furthermore, we traced
the transformation and channeling of Aspergillus-derived mycotoxins into food raw
materials, particularly in the case of aflatoxin contaminated milk, which represents
the major route of human exposure among animal-derived foods. The early and reliable
detection of aflatoxins in feed, forage and primary commodities is an increasingly
important issue and, therefore, the newly developed, easy-to-use qualitative and quantitative
aflatoxin analytical methods are also summarized in the review.
