In Vitro Assessment of Commercial Multi-Mycotoxin Binders to Reduce the Bioavailability of Emerging Mycotoxins in Livestock

Abstract

The changing climate and agricultural practices continue to drive the increased prevalence and levels of both regulated and emerging mycotoxins in feed and food crops. This poses a considerable challenge for the agricultural sector in developing and developed countries as there is growing evidence that the emerging contaminants are capable of inducing a wide range of adverse health effects in livestock. This study evaluated and compared the capacity of commercially available mycotoxin binders to reduce the bioavailability of eight important emerging mycotoxins commonly found in livestock feeds. A novel in vitro model simulating the gastrointestinal track (GIT) of a monogastric animal was developed. Then, the efficiency of ten commercial binders with multi-mycotoxin binding claims were evaluated using the developed in vitro GIT model. Whist all the ten products demonstrated the capacity to simultaneously decrease the levels of more than one emerging mycotoxins, only one product (a mixed silicate) was able to considerably reduce the concentrations of all the eight emerging mycotoxins simultaneously under the simulated in vitro conditions. This study highlights, for the first time, a significant gap in emerging mycotoxin mitigation through the deployment of binding agents and identifies the need for the development of novel mitigation strategies for this important group of mycotoxins.

Keywords: emerging mycotoxins, livestock, mycotoxin binders, in vitro model, mitigation