The 'carry-over' of aflatoxin into milk of cows fed ammoniated rations: use of an HPLC method and a genotoxicity test for determining milk safety.

Aflatoxin B1 (Af.B1) contaminated and detoxified commodities were used to feed lactating cows. The detoxification treatment was performed using an autoclaving process. Af.B1 contents in untreated groundnut meal, treated groundnut meal, and a mixture of treated groundnut meal and soyameal were 475.0, 6.0 and 3.0 micrograms/kg, respectively. Af.M1 determination in milk was performed using an HPLC method with a detection limit of 0.025 micrograms/l. Also, an attempt was made to apply a genotoxicity test, the SOS Chromotest, to check for the presence of genotoxic residues in the various milk samples. The total excreted Af.M1 was 1.08%, 14.7% and 6.35% of the total ingested Af.B1 from untreated, treated and mixed treated feed, respectively. An unusual Af.M1 excretion peak was observed during the first four days of feeding the treated diet. Approximately 30% of the unreacted ingested Af.B1 appeared in the milk as the metabolite Af.M1. On the following days, the amount of Af.M1 in the milk samples decreased quickly and became almost undetectable. However, the genotoxicity test assays did not show any difference between the various experimental milk samples.