Aflatoxin M 1 contamination of milk in Pakistan, like many developing countries, is poorly understood. The present study was therefore conducted to determine AFM 1 contamination of milk and its contributory factors in Pakistan. We sampled milk and feedstuffs from 450 peri-urban dairy farms in seven major cities following a cross-sectional study design. Analysis of milk using ELISA revealed high contamination with an overall average of 3164.5 ng of AFM 1 /L, and significant differences (p < 0.001) between cities. The milk sampled from Gilgit, in northern hilly areas, had an average AFM 1 level of 92.5 ng/L. Milk from other cities had 3529.7 ng/L average contamination, with only 5.7% samples qualifying the maximum tolerable limit of 500 ng of AFM 1 /L. Heavy mean aflatoxin contamination was found in bakery waste (724.6 μg/kg), and cottonseed cake (600.8 μg/kg). Rest of the other feedstuffs had moderate to low mean aflatoxin contamination, ranging from 66.0 μg/kg in maize stover to 3.4 μg/kg in wheat bran. The mean aflatoxin level in commercial dairy concentrates was 32.7 µg/kg. About 80% of the total aflatoxin intake of dairy animals was contributed by cottonseed cake alone due to its high aflatoxin contamination and proportion in dairy rations. On-farm storage time of oilseed cakes varied (p < 0.01) in different cities but was not associated with aflatoxin contamination. The exceptionally high AFM 1 contamination suggests that milk from peri-urban dairy farms is a serious public health threat in Pakistan. This situation can be mitigated by reducing aflatoxin contamination in cottonseed cake and promoting the use of commercial concentrates and other feedstuffs with low contamination.
Bovine intramammary inflammation is one of the most important endemic and a mainly general infection of dairy animals which causes drastic losses in terms of reduced milk production and quality, costly medication and culling of important animals. Mastitis is responsible for poor milk quality in terms of direct hygienic quality and indirect quality characteristics of milk (Radostits et al., 2007;Bilal et al., 2004). Mastitic animals also have a deleterious Short CommunicationAbstract |Mycoplasma are known to cause several diseases in bovine animals including mastitis. The prevalence of mycoplasma mastitis is reported from many parts of the world in farm animals. The response of antimicrobials against this infection is very poor that usually lead to culling of infected animals. In Pakistan, unfortunately no data is available on the occurrence of mycoplasma mastitis in farm animals. Therefore, current field investigation was conducted first time in centre-west Balochistan to get the preliminary data on mycoplasma mastitis. Milk samples (n = 579) were collected from three districts viz., Jaffar abad, Sohbat pur and Naseer abad from mastitis suspected buffaloes. The samples were collected from those animals which had abnormal milk or physical signs (like swelling, abscess, wound etc.) on udder or teats or have suddenly dropped milk production. All samples were cultured on PPLO (pleuropneumonia like organism) media and were found negative for Mycoplasma spp. The prevalence of mycoplasma mastitis in this population of dairy buffaloes was recorded <0.23%. The study results suggested that the mycoplasma mastitis did not exist in buffaloes of study area, however, further studies using molecular tools are warranted to validate these findings.
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