Many Faces of Food Contamination

One of the most common mycotoxins found in foods are aflatoxins, of which Aflatoxin B1, is the most toxic and a potent carcinogen. Aflatoxins contamination is prevalent in cotton, peanuts, spices, pistachios, and maize produced in tropical and subtropical regions, which could be conducive to molds. Other mycotoxins that make it into the food supply are ochratoxins (mostly found in beer and wine); citrinins (associated with yellow rice disease in Japan, acting as a nephrotoxin in all animal species tested); ergot alkaloids (found in contaminated flours and cereals, even though modern methods of grain cleaning have significantly reduced the risk); patulins (associated with moldy fruits and vegetables, and connected to immune system damage in animals); and fusarium toxins, of which trichothecenes are most strongly associated with toxic effects in animals and humans and can more commonly be found in wheat and maize grains.

Addressing Food Contaminants

As a standard setting organization for which public health is the core of its mission, USP has typically set limits for contaminants in food ingredients contained in the Food Chemicals Codex (FCC), a source of quality standards for food ingredients that industry uses as a tool to establish food integrity in the U.S. and abroad.

USP desires to strengthen and increase the role of the FCC to help limit the exposure of the consumer to contaminants through food. One of the efforts USP is engaged in is promoting risk-based approaches to food contaminants. Contaminants testing have costs associated that ultimately trickle down to the consumer and a careful evaluation of what to test and the impact of such testing on public health are within a risk-based approach.

Reasonable sources of specific contaminants, testing resources for quantifying contaminants, and determining whether certain risks are acceptable are topics that should be addressed to help guide questions on how to better predict hazard exposure and how to prevent it.

USP is holding an open workshop entitled “Chemical Contaminants in Foods—Risk-Based Approaches to Protect Public Health” on November 20 to 21, 2014 at its headquarters in Rockville, Md., for experts, regulators, and industry to gather information and gauge the needs of stakeholders around the globe with the objective of setting or improving standards for contaminants in food. When a limit is known, compliance is easy to determine; however, many of the limits for food contaminants are yet to be established. When there are no limits for a contaminant, compliance becomes a more complex question and, therefore, more difficult to answer. It’s expected that some of the interactions in this workshop will result in actions and guidelines on what to do when there is no regulatory limit for a specific contaminant in a specific food.

Dr. Lipp is the senior director of food standards at USP. Reach him at [email protected]. Dr. Mejia is a senior scientific liaison for USP. Other USP staff contributors are Gabriel Giancaspro, PhD, and Claudia Costabile, MA.