A survey on the occurrence of ochratoxin A in feeds and sera collected in conventional and organic poultry farms in Northern Italy

Abstract

A survey has been conducted on conventional and organic poultry farms located in northern Italy in order to investigate the occurrence of ochratoxin A (OTA) in feeds and sera in 2006. Ten poultry farms were monitored by taking 20 samples of feed and 94 samples of blood. OTA was assessed through immunoaffinity column purification and HPLC analysis. For in-house validation, recovery experiments, carried out on the spiked samples in the range of 1.0-10.0 μg OTA kg-1 and 0.3-3.0 ng OTA ml-1 for the feed and serum samples, respectively, led to overall recovery averages of 80.6% (RDS=7.3%, n=9) and 83.3% (RDS=3.1%, n=9), respectively. All the feed samples were contaminated by OTA with values ranging from 0.04 to 6.50 μg kg-1. Fiftythree percent of the sera samples were positive, with values ranging from 0.003-0.165 ng ml-1. None of the feed samples was above the limits set by the European Union on OTA contamination in poultry feeds. No statistically significant differences in OTA contamination of feed or sera were observed either between the organic vs conventional group or between the laying hens vs broiler group.