Ochratoxin A in Italian marketed cocoa products

Ochratoxin A (OTA) is a mycotoxin produced by fungi belonging to the Penicillium and Aspergillus genera. The natural occurrence of OTA in 18 pure cocoa powder samples marketed in Italy and purchased from supermarkets, organic product shops and retail shops was investigated. Nine samples of the eighteen products had no detectable OTA contamination (below 10 ng/kg). Nine positive samples had a toxin concentration ranging between 0.22 and 0.77 μg/kg with a mean of 0.43 μg/kg. All the organic samples analyzed were negative for OTA; of 14 conventional samples analyzed, four samples (28.56%) were above the suggested legal limit (0.5 μg/kg) because they were contaminated with 0.77, 0.53, 0.67 and 0.62 μg/kg, respectively. The optimization of the extraction protocol and comparison of different brands of immunoaffinity column clean-up were carried out. The incidence (50% of examined samples) of the OTA level in Italian cocoa marketed products is an important signal of attention for consumers, because cocoa is widely used in the production of child snack foods and it contributes to OTA daily intake.