Food Hygiene and Safety Science最新文献

Infant formula in liquid for childcare can be stored at room temperature for a certain period of time, reducing the burden of childcare and preparing for disasters. Against this background, domestic manufacturing and sales began in March 2019. AFM₁ is a metabolite of aflatoxin B₁ (AFB₁), a carcinogenic mycotoxin, and is contained in the milk of livestock fed a diet contaminated with AFB₁. At present, standard values have not been set for infant formula in liquid as well as prepared infant formula in liquid, and infants consume a large amount of dairy products per body weight, so care must be taken in the intake.In this study, we investigated the actual condition of AFM₁ content in dairy products with high intake of infants. As a result of the investigation, the AFM₁ of the detected dairy products was 0.001 to 0.005 μg/kg, which was extremely small compared to the AFM₁ in the dairy products reported so far. Since infant nutrition depends on dairy products, it is undeniable that they may consume more than adults, so continuous research is needed.

Histamine poisoning has been reported worldwide. Improvements in refrigeration technology have led to a reduction in this food poisoning; however, it continues to occur. Misdiagnosis of fish allergies has compounded this problem and the number of patients subjected to histamine poisoning that are transported to the emergency ward because of anaphylactic shock-like symptoms should not be underestimated. We investigated incidents of histamine food poisoning in Japan from 1998 to 2020, and found that there were a mean 9.7 incidents/year and 195.3 cases/year. Facility-wise occurrence of the incidents per year was the highest in restaurants followed by lunch facilities, and these together accounted for approximately 70% of the incidents. Facility-wise total number of cases was the highest in lunch facilities followed by restaurants, and these together accounted for 80% of the cases. Fish associated with histamine poisoning were mainly tuna, marlin, and mackerel. Based on the current literature review, 23 genera of histamine-producing bacteria were isolated from fish purchased in Japan. The most frequently reported bacteria were Morganella morganii and Photobacterium damselae. Psychrophilic bacteria such as Morganella psychrotolerans and Photobacterium phosphoreum were also isolated. To prevent histamine poisoning, freezing or fast handling of fish and the products during processing and consuming is important because only refrigeration of fish is enough.

A collaborative study for validating the determination method of chlorpropham in feeds by LC-MS/MS was conducted in 13 laboratories using 2 kinds of formula feeds, oats, barley, wheat, and corn. The resulting trueness ranged from 75.3 to 87.0%, repeatability and reproducibility in terms of relative standard deviation (RSD_r and RSD_R) were within 7.3% and 33% respectively, and the HorRat values ranged from 0.39 to 1.5. The limit of detection and limit of quantitation of chlorpropham in feed ware 0.008 mg/kg and 0.003 mg/kg, respectively. This method was thus validated as useful for inspections of chlorpropham in feed.

This study examined the frequency of worsening clinical test values related to supplement use using a nationwide online survey, with a focus on liver function markers, and clarified the differences between outcome indices of diarrhea or skin manifestations. A nationwide online survey was conducted with 73,010 supplement users from the previous year. Of these, 221 individuals with worsening clinical test values responded to the full-scale survey. To compare surveys with different outcome indices, we used previously reported data from similar surveys.Only 0.5% of individuals who self-reported worsening of clinical test values caused by supplement use recognized an almost certain causal relationship. Among the test items, blood lipids were the most frequently reported. The frequency of worsening liver function markers was 0.2% in supplement users. Among those who experienced worsening clinical test values, 56.1% received no treatment and 82.4% did not report the incidence of worsening clinical test values anywhere. The ingredient-based classification of products revealed more "Peptides or animal by-products" and "Combination products/not classifiable products" than those associated with other categories. Compared to the results of the survey about the experience of diarrhea or skin manifestations, those who experienced worsening clinical test values were predominantly men, frequent and long-term users, and individuals whose products could not be identified.Few supplement users experience worsening of liver function markers, which does not seem serious. However, it is difficult for supplement users to recognize abnormal changes by themselves. Thus, it is important to record product information, usage, and changes in physical condition.

Incidents of food poisoning associated with tetrodotoxin (TTX) contamination occur every year throughout Japan. Here, we determined TTX levels in leftover foods and serum and urine samples from eight food poisoning incidents associated with TTX contamination in Nagasaki, Japan, from 2011 to 2017.Seven food samples associated with four of these food poisoning incidents were classified as weakly toxic (four samples), moderate-to-strongly toxic (two samples), and strongly toxic (one sample).In comparison with previous reports, TTX was detected at harmful levels in the urine samples, but the grade of poisoning symptoms varied.The patients' time to maximum serum TTX levels (T_max) was estimated to be 12-24 h after ingestion of TTX-containing foods. Additionally, serum TTX levels of 19.5 ng/mL or higher within 24 h after ingestion indicated Grade 3 poisoning associated with respiratory abnormalities.These conditions were considered indicators of severe symptoms, while TTX levels of 1-3 ng/mL relate to the onset and disappearance of symptoms. A negative correlation was found between the logarithm of serum TTX concentration and the time after ingestion for two patients, indicating that the TTX serum levels decreased logarithmically. Furthermore, the TTX serum half-lives (T_1/2) were 17.5 and 23.7 h.The results of this study enhance our understanding of TTX food safety and contribute to TTX risk assessment.

Internal quality control (IQC) is essential to ensure the reliability of the results of chemical analysis. In this study, we propose a novel method of IQC for multiresidue analysis of pesticides. A total of seven stable isotope labeled compounds (SILC) were added to analytical samples and were used to monitor and evaluate the quality of analytical results. In contrast to conventional IQC method in which only a limited number of control materials were analyzed to ensure the reliability of the results for an entire batch, the developed method can monitor the analytical quality of all the samples in the batch. It was shown that the developed method could achieve better performance than that of conventional method. Therefore, the developed method is considered to be promising for practical applications.(Received January 27, 2022; Accepted July 4, 2022).

Histamine is produced from histidine using histidine decarboxylase of histamine-producing bacteria. However, associated histamine food poisoning demands microbiological controls. Furthermore, studies reported that histamine production by histamine-producing bacteria is affected by temperature. Therefore, to prevent histamine food poisoning, it is desirable to store foods below 4℃. However, it is challenging to maintain the storage temperature of food substances in refrigerators constantly below 4℃. Thus, we investigated histamine production capacity using seven histamine-producing bacterial strains under storage at 10℃, a more reasonable cold storage condition. Subsequently, we examined the variation of histamine production in buffers, the correlation between bacterial density and histamine production quantities, and the growth rate in broths. Results showed that similar levels of histamine were produced in buffers even after 5 days of storage under certain conditions in which histamine-producing bacteria did not grow. Moreover, bacterial density was proportional to histamine production, and the coefficient of determination was more than 0.97, and the bacterial density required to produce 200 μg/mL of histamine during storage at 10℃ was calculated to be 4×10⁷-4×10⁸ CFU/mL. When the initial bacterial density was 10²-10³ CFU/mL, psychrophilic bacteria required 2 or 3 days and mesophilic bacteria required more than 4 days to grow above 10⁷ CFU/mL. The above results suggest that understanding the capacity of histamine-producing bacteria to produce histamine and its growth rate in foods is important for the prevention of histamine food poisoning.

We have developed a method for determination of the species of origin of biological foreign substances using proteomics analysis technology. That is, the amino acid sequence of the tryptic digested product of the protein extracted from the foreign substance is determined by high-resolution LC-MS, and the amino acid sequence is collated with a public protein database to determine the origin species of the foreign substance. As a result of testing meat (beef, pork, chicken) and egg (chicken, quail) from known origin as simulated foreign substances, we were able to find species-specific amino acid sequences for each species, suggesting that the developed method is useful for species discrimination of a foreign substances that have been heat-treated with retort, this method is potentially useful to complement DNA analysis, for determination of the species of origin of foreign substances.

A liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS)-based method was developed for determining quinclorac in livestock products. Quinclorac was extracted from the samples using a solution of acetone and hydrochloric acid mixed in a 99 : 1 ratio. The crude extract was purified with ethyl acetate under basic conditions, followed by quinclorac extraction with ethyl acetate under acidic conditions and analysis using LC-MS/MS. The average recoveries of quinclorac from five livestock products (n=5) fortified at the maximum residue limits or 0.01 mg/kg ranged from 85.6 to 93.5%, with the precision of repeatability ranging from 1.7 to 6.8%. The quantification limit in this analytical method was 0.01 mg/kg. These results suggest that the developed method is useful for analyzing quinclorac in livestock products.

Fusarium species infect the major cereals consumed as food and feed, contaminating them with various toxic secondary metabolites known as toxins. Among these toxins, which include trichothecenes, zearalenone (ZEA), and fumonisins, the type-B trichothecene deoxynivalenol (DON) is generally considered as the most important. The present study evaluates an analytical method for the detection and quantification of multiple Fusarium toxins, namely, DON, acetyl forms of DON (3-Ac-DON and 15-Ac-DON), a glycoside form of DON (DON-3G), and other Fusarium toxins (nivalenol, an acetyl form of NIV (fusarenonX), T-2 and HT-2 toxins, diacetoxyscirpenol, and ZEA) in Job's tears and buckwheat.