Corn with mold poison delivered to Emsland

Farms in the Emsland are supplied with contaminated feed maize

03/25/2013

Warning of mold poison in feed maize. The Lower Saxony Ministry of Agriculture has informed on Monday that a Dutch „Feed business operates a batch of maize contaminated with the mold toxin aflatoxin to a compound feed manufacturer in the district of Emsland“ has delivered. The Lower Saxon authorities have been informed of this by a corresponding quick warning from the Netherlands on Friday evening.

According to information from the Lower Saxony Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, the mold-contaminated corn originated „Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and Serbia and was first transported via Romania to Rotterdam.“ According to the latest information, four dairy farmers in the district of Emsland were supplied with possibly contaminated feed by the compound feed manufacturer who had taken the maize. If aflatoxin-containing maize has actually been fed to the cows, there is a risk that corresponding residues will be found in the milk, which at worst may also be dangerous for consumers. As a result, milk samples were taken promptly at the four farms in Emsland, and processing of the milk produced here was prohibited unless the results of the investigations were available. Currently, however, the district of Emsland has given the all-clear.

Mold poison in corn no unknown problem
The problem of mold poison strains corn deliveries from Balkan countries is by no means a surprising new release for the authorities. Thus, the Lower Saxony Ministry of Agriculture in its current press release on the issued „General animal feed ordinance for the protection against dangers of aflatoxin B1 in feed from corn harvested in 2012 in Bulgaria, Romania and Poland“ directed. With feed maize from Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Serbs, many feed producers have bridged bottlenecks in 2012. This also led to the recently revealed scandal of contaminated corn from Serbia, which was apparently supplied to thousands of farms in Germany. The authorities in Brake in Lower Saxony and Bremen ensured around 35,000 tons of the contaminated corn, but about 10,000 tons had already been delivered to the companies. In Serbia, at the end of February, the authorities had withdrawn the dairy products from several manufacturers, as evidence of an increased concentration of aflatoxin residues was found. (Fp)

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Picture credits: Luise