Sampling feed for mycotoxins: acquiring knowledge from food

The occurrence and control of mycotoxins in feed and food are items of great interest to researchers, producers, manufacturers and regulatory agencies. In order to implement knowledge of control measures for mycotoxins in the entire food production chain, coordinated inspection programmes aimed to check the presence and concentration of mycotoxins in feedingstuffs are recommended by the Commission of the European Communities. Reliability of measured levels of mycotoxins in feed and food is greatly affected by the collection of representative samples. Because of the heterogeneous distribution of mycotoxins, the variability associated with a mycotoxin test procedure usually depends heavily on the sampling plan. European legislation dealing with sampling plans for mycotoxins in foodstuffs has been recently revised. The aim of the following overview is to discuss the role of sampling in mycotoxin-contaminated feed by considering the evolution of legislation dealing with sampling plans for food. A sampling procedure is a multistage process and consists of three distinct phases: sampling, sample preparation and analysis. The variability associated with each step of a sampling procedure and the aspects related to feedstuffs, ma-trix/mycotoxin combination and level of contamination are discussed.