ISSUE FOCUS 26 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE May 2025 THE RELEVANCE OF MYCOTOXIN MITIGATING STRATEGIES ON DAIRY FARMS Dr. Cornelia Becker Product Manager Toxin Management Biochem When the relevance of mycotoxin mitigating strategies in dairy farms was discussed in the past, the focus was on managing aflatoxin B1 in the final feed to avoid a high carry-over rate of AFM1 into milk and thus protect human health. In recent years, however, the health of the dairy cow itself and its maintenance have become increasingly important. Even if ruminants are less sensitive to the effects of mycotoxins than monogastric animals thanks to a certain microbial detoxification in the rumen, this protection may not be sufficient in all cases: • The feed of dairy cows leads to a high exposure to a broad spectrum of mycotoxins, especially through the various silages (Fink-Gremmels, 2008). As the dry matter intake is also very high, dairy cow feed obviously carries a high qualitative and quantitative risk for the uptake of mycotoxins. • The degradation of mycotoxins is reduced when feeding with high energy density due to a shortened passage time or, for example, in the case of deoxynivalenol (DON) with reduced rumen pH (Debevere et al., 2020). It can therefore be assumed that intensive feeding is associated with a reduced detoxification of mycotoxins overall. • When some mycotoxins are degraded, the degradation product can sometimes be even more harmful than the original toxin. For example, the degradation of zearalenone (ZEA) leads, among other things, to the formation of α-zearalenol (Seeling et al., 2005), which is 60 times more estrogenic than zearalenone itself. As a result, there is a real risk that larger quantities of mycotoxins may escape ruminal detoxification and lead to symptoms similar to those of monogastric animal species. The most frequently reported clinical signs are reduced milk yield, an altered milk quality, which is particularly evident in reduced milk fat, increased somatic cell count (SCC) or partly reproductive disorders. There is a wide range of variations in the assessment or determination of critical contamination levels. While in scientific trials with an artificial contamination by purified mycotoxins, very high quantities appeared to be necessary to trigger such symptoms, field reports point to reduced health and performance even at levels far below the EFSA guidance values when feeding naturally contaminated raw materials (Whitlow et al., 2008). In the following, several field trials are presented that show from different perspectives how low to moderate levels of field contamination can have a negative impact on dairy cow performance and health and how an efficient broad spectrum toxin binder (B.I.O. Tox®Activ8, Biochem) can prevent these adverse effects.
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