From global prospective of food safety and food security, mycotoxin contamination of foods has gained much attention as potential health hazards for humans and animals. Cereals and other crops are exposed to fungal attack in the field or during storage and this attack may result in mycotoxin contamination of crops. Animal feed is basic necessity for all the live stock, poultry and other animals. AF is the most important for human and animal health perspective and in developing countries such as Pakistan where climate conditions favor the formation of these toxic metabolites. Governments and private organizations of international level have established maximum residue levels (MRIs) which usually guide to control AF in feed. Therefore, the current study was planned to detoxify AF by using different organic acid treatments in animal feed collected from different dairy farms of Punjab.
The samples of cotton seed cake, maize oil cake and animal feed were collected and checked the presence of AFB1 qualitatively by TLC and quantitatively by HPLC. The samples which gave positive results were treated with different acidic treatments applied on it. Firstly checked the results of citric acid, acetic acid and lactic acid on feed sample qualitatively by TLC. TLC plates were checked under UV box and the samples which showed the detoxification of AF were quantitatively analyzed by HPLC in Toxicology Laboratory, QOL, UVAS, Lahore, Pakistan.


The average concentration of AFB1 found in the cotton seed cake, maize oil cake and mixed feed were 279.8 ppb, 34.2 ppb and 25.5 ppb, respectively much greater than permissible levels proposed by European Union. Treatments of varying concentration of citric acid, acetic acid and lactic acid were applied on positive samples (≥20 ppb) and checked their effect on rate of detoxification.
All the above mention treatments applied on the feed samples in order to obtained in vitro detoxification of AFB1. Sprayed different concentration of acetic acid, citric acid and lactic on positive samples by varying volumes and placed them over night then extracted and analyzed.
It has been observed that 1N concentration of citric acid, acetic acid and lactic acid showed complete detoxification. However, when these samples were treated with 0.5N solution of organic acids then variation was seen in rate of detoxification.
Statistically these results were analyzed by ANOVA which showed that effect of these treatments on rate of detoxification was highly significant (P<0.05). In vitro detoxification of AF by these organic acids was proved beneficial in order to reduce the animal and human health risks. However, in vivo detoxification of aflatoxin by using these organic acids should be studied in future.