Context-Traces of Aflatoxin M1 (AFM1), a deadly carcinogen, were found in some of the milk samples tested as part of a national survey by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).

Findings

• Out of the total 6,432 samples of liquid milk which were tested, 456 samples (7.1 per cent) were found to be unsafe due to contaminants such as Aflatoxin-M1, antibiotics or pesticides
• Aflatoxin-M1 is a contaminant that comes in the milk through poor storage practices of animal feed and fodder.

• The highest rates of aflatoxin contamination were found in Tamil Nadu (88 out of 551 samples), Delhi (38 out of 262 samples) and Kerala (37 out of 187 samples). The carcinogen was found to be more prevalent in processed rather than raw milk.

Aflatoxin

• Aflatoxins are toxins produced by certain fungi which are generally found in agricultural crops like maize, peanuts, cotton seed and others. They are carcinogenic in nature, which means they can cause cancer.
• Consumption of food containing aflatoxin concentrations of one milligram/kilogram or higher has been suspected to cause aflatoxicosis, the prognosis of which consists of acute liver failure, jaundice, lethargy and nausea, eventually leading to death, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) study in February 2018.
• Based on past outbreaks, it has been estimated that when consumed over a period of 1–3 weeks, an Aflatoxin B1 dose of 20–120 microgram per kilogram (μg/kg) by weight per day is acutely toxic and potentially lethal.
• According to FSSAI standards, the permissible limit of aflatoxins in milk is 0.5 µg/kg.
• A study conducted in Nairobi, Kenya in August 2018 stated that AFM1 had potentially severe health impacts on milk consumers, including the risk of cancer and stunting in children under the age of five years.
• The exposure to AFM1 from milk is 46 nanogram per kilogram (ng/day) on average, but children bear higher exposure of 3.5 ng/kg bodyweight per day (bw/day) compared to adults, at 0.8 ng/kg bw/day. This causes stunting among children.

How do you differentiate between chemical contamination and adulteration? And what are the implications of this distinction?

Contamination and adulteration both may involve the presence of a substance that is not intended to be in a product.

Contamination

• Contamination is unintentional.
• It may result from natural causes (e.g., heavy metals of the soil that are taken up by plants) or causes implicit in the process (e.g., pesticide residues). These scenarios are often referred to as technically unavoidable.
• Contamination can also occur as a consequence of some sort of shortcoming or lapse in quality control. Contamination is, for the most part, predictable (e.g., higher residues of arsenic can be expected in plants grown in soil that is itself high in arsenic; the application of pesticides in general will lead to pesticide residues in plants), and risks from contamination are generally easier to manage or limit because they involve hazards that manufacturers know they need to carefully control.
• Additional examples are aflatoxins in peanuts or milk, or microbiological contaminants in fresh or canned products.

Adulteration

• Adulteration, on the other hand, is generally economically motivated. It often employs the intentional replacement of the expected ingredient, or its dilution, with a less expensive alternative—such as the scrap melamine that was added to milk products and pet food to falsify the levels of protein in these products.
• Not every case of adulteration will result in serious adverse health effects such as those related to the melamine scandals, which is why we do not hear about this problem as often as it occurs.
• In most cases, finished product manufacturers and consumers will simply be cheated out of what they have paid a premium for—still unethical, still with some potential negative consequences for the brand image (e.g., consumer detection of taste and/or texture differences), but not necessarily a health risk to the consumer.
• However, adulteration always results in the introduction of unknown hazards and hence unknown risks into the production of, and eventually into, the consumer product.
• No one knows what was added (except for the adulterator), and thus no one can account for risks associated with that substance. The food’s safety, the brand’s image and ultimately the safety of the consumer are at the mercy of the adulterator’s knowledge with regard to the safety of the substitution. (In the melamine milk powder scandal, for instance, had the perpetrators not used scrap melamine with the combined presence of melamine and cyanuric acid, it may not have resulted in tragic health effects—widespread kidney problems and even the deaths—on infants and would have probably gone undetected.)
• That is the danger adulteration poses—an unknown element is introduced into the food supply chain that may be harmless, but may be devastating, and it often is not reasonable to expect its presence because it is designed to bypass detection by routine testing.