Undertaking a New Regulatory Challenge: Monitoring of Ergot Alkaloids in Italian Food Commodities
2021
Veronica Maria Teresa Lattanzio | Emanuela Verdini | Stefano Sdogati | Angela Caporali | Biancamaria Ciasca | Ivan Pecorelli
The present manuscript reports on monitoring data of 12 ergot alkaloids (EAs) in cereal and cereal-derived products, collected in Italy over the period 2017&ndash:2020, for official control purposes under the edge of the Commission Recommendation 2012/154/EU on the monitoring of the presence of EAs in feed and food. To these purposes, an LC-MS/MS method was set up and applied, after in-house verification of its analytical performance. Besides satisfactory recoveries and precision, the method&rsquo:s quantification limits proved suitable to assess the compliance of cereals and cereal-based foods with the recently issued EU maximum permitted levels (Commission Regulation 2021/1399/EU). The validity of the generated data was also evaluated through the adoption of four proficiency tests, from which acceptable z-score values (&minus:2 &le: z &le: 2) were obtained. The method was then applied to analyse a total of 67 samples, collected in Italy over the period 2017&ndash:2020. The samples consisted of 18 cereal grains, 16 flours (14 of wheat and 2 of spelt) and 31 other types of cereals derivatives (including 9 for infants). Overall, the EAs analysis returned a high percentage of left-censored data (>:86%). Among the positive samples, the highest contamination levels, up to 94.2 µ:g/kg, were found for ergocristine (12% incidence), followed by ergocristinine (7% incidence) with levels of up to 48.3 µ:g/kg.
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