PRESENT STATUS OF MYCOTOXIN STUDIES IN KOREA

Mycotoxins are a group of toxicants giving a risk potential to human health in connection with the daily food intake. Food commodities once contaminated with mycotoxins can not be detoxified by any economic means and prevention was suggested as the only measure. In order to minimize the economic loss and health hazard posed by mycotoxins and toxicoses, systematic and toxicological studies on the subject should be undertaken. Most reports in Korea were concentrated on the mycological studies of relatively easy techniques and the confirmation or quantitation of mycotoxins was rarely done. Research topics to be undertaken in future may be exemplifid below: (1) Establishing assay methods for individual or multi-residue of mycotoxins (2) Monitoring of mycotoxins for suspicious food or feed samples in Korea (3) Epidemiological survey of mycotoxicoses (4) Etiological survey of disease outbreaks associated with mycotoxins (5) Accumulation of testing method and data on the toxicity of mycotoxins (6) Legal regulation to control mycotoxins and development of their detoxification / elimination methods