dsm-firmenich study highlights multi-mmycotoxins in worldwide feed ingredients

In a major service to global livestock and feed manufacturing sector, dsm-firmenich Animal Nutrition & Health released the latest findings from its premier World Mycotoxin Survey. The data reveals a sharp, unprecedented escalation in multi-mycotoxin co-contamination across global feed ingredients, signaling severe threats to global herd performance, animal welfare, and agribusiness margins.

The comprehensive study analyzed 4,465 samples collected from 66 countries, executing a total of 26,751 sophisticated analytical runs. The core takeaway from the data is clear: single-toxin contamination is no longer the clinical norm; complex, multi-analyte co-contamination has become the baseline reality for worldwide crop supplies.

The Core Data Metrics: Synergistic Toxicity

The survey’s most striking metric redefines how nutritionists must evaluate raw material risk. Rather than detecting isolated pockets of fungal toxins, the testing shows that complex toxic cocktails are nearly ubiquitous in agricultural commodities:

• The Co-Contamination Baseline: A staggering 83% of all samples analyzed contained 10 or more distinct mycotoxins simultaneously

• The High-Density Sample Average: On average, a single raw feed ingredient sample contained 21 different mycotoxins and associated fungal metabolites

• The Dominance of Fusarium: Toxic strains produced by Fusarium molds (including vomitoxin, fumonisins, and zearalenone) have achieved near-total market saturation, contaminating 9 out of every 10 samples processed globally

  Why This Matters to Feed Formulators / Veterinarians: Traditional toxicology frequently focuses on the safe threshold of a single toxin. However, when 21 metabolites hit an animal’s digestive tract at once, they trigger dangerous synergistic toxicities. At sub-clinical levels, these combined toxins can cause intestinal hemorrhages, severe organ damage, and immune suppression, even if each individual toxin falls below regulatory limits.

Global Risk Profile: Regional Hotspots and Prevalence Rates

The report outlines how climatic shifts, changing weather patterns, and shifting grain storage dynamics have created extensive, extreme-risk agricultural corridors across every major continent.

North America

Livestock, poultry, and aquaculture producers across the United States and Canada face extreme-to-high exposure risks, driven heavily by three key Fusarium toxins: 

• B-Trichothecenes (B-Trich / Vomitoxin): Present in 83% of tracked crop samples.

• Zearalenone (ZEN): Detected in 79% of ingredients, presenting severe reproductive risks for swine herds.

• Fumonisins (FUM): Maintaining a steady 57% occurrence rate.

Central and South America

Warm, humid growing seasons across Latin America have intensified Fusarium pressures. The region’s primary threats include:

• Fumonisins (FUM): Showing massive physical density, with average contamination levels reaching an intense 2,411 ppb (parts per billion).

• Zearalenone (ZEN): Consistently averaging 81 ppb, which is high enough to trigger embryonic losses and irregular heat cycles in breeding sows.

South Asia

The Indian subcontinent continues to battle an extreme-risk classification across multiple toxin profiles simultaneously. The region shows severe co-prevalence rates ranging from 51% to 100% for Aflatoxins (highly carcinogenic liver toxins), B-Trichothecenes, Fumonisins, Ochratoxin A (OTA), and Zearalenone.

China, Taiwan, and East Asia

• Fumonisins (FUM): Detected in 93% of all agricultural samples from the China/Taiwan corridor.

B-Trichothecenes: Registered an alarming 96% occurrence rate across broader East Asia, indicating widespread grain degradation.

Europe

Geographical boundary lines for crop molds are actively shifting upward:

• Central & Southern Europe: Recording high B-Trichothecenes occurrence rates of 91% and 94%, respectively.
• Southern Europe: Facing unprecedented tropical mold pressures, with 97% of samples testing positive for high levels of Fumonisins.

Looking Beyond “Masked” Toxins

The sheer volume of multi-mycotoxin data captured in this report was made possible by advanced diagnostic tools developed by dsm-firmenich in partnership with the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU). 

Rather than relying on basic rapid-test strips that only detect simple, free-form toxins, the testing utilized Spectrum Top® 50 and Spectrum 380®—highly advanced Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) platforms. 

This state-of-the-art “dilute-and-shoot” method allows researchers to screen for hundreds of fungal, plant, and bacterial metabolites in a single run. Crucially, this includes masked and modified mycotoxins—toxins that plants chemically alter or bind to sugars to protect themselves. These masked toxins easily bypass standard factory screening but split apart inside an animal’s stomach, releasing full toxicity directly into the gut.

Consolidated Summary: Global Mycotoxin Threat

Feed formulators’ have a tough job at hand in chosing appropriate feed ingredients for formulating compound feeds so as to minimize risk and at the same time use high quality, well researched toxin binders to take care of any mycotoxins seeping into compound feed.