Effect in Human and Animal Health
Many Fusarium species (including F. graminearum) produce mycotoxins—fungal chemicals that are harmful to animals. These chemicals may operate in nature to disable plant defense mechanisms or to defend the fungus against other microorganisms. The major toxin produced by F. graminearum in association with FHB in wheat and barley is deoxynivalenol (DON). DON is sometimes called vomitoxin because of its deleterious effects on the digestive system of swine and other monogastric animals. DON disrupts normal cell function by inhibiting protein synthesis. Humans consuming flour made from wheat contaminated with DON will often demonstrate symptoms of nausea, fever, headaches, and vomiting.
DON contamination is measured in parts per million (ppm). DON levels in FHB-infected wheat are frequently quite high (>20 ppm). The USDA recommends that DON levels in human foods not exceed 1 ppm. However, individual grain buyers may have lower tolerances of DON in purchased grain. The FDA has various guideline levels of DON permissible in livestock feed: ruminant animals, such as feeder cattle, are the most tolerant, while swine have the highest sensitivity to DON in livestock feed, with pigs refusing feed containing 1ppm of DON.
The mycotoxins produced by F. graminearum may pose a serious threat to human and domestic animal health. Grain that has been infected with the fungus may become incorporated into our staple diets. Strains of the fungus from different countries produce different toxins, some potentially more potent and dangerous than those from strains currently in the United States.
Read more about this topic: Fusarium Ear Blight
Famous quotes containing the words effect, human, animal and/or health:
“Movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century. Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellectual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them—as an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)
“The people of Western Europe are facing this summer a series of tragic dilemmas. Of the hopes that dazzled the last twenty years that some political movement might tend to the betterment of the human lot, little remains above ground but the tattered slogans of the past.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“When we reflect upon the cruelties daily practised upon such of the animal creation as are given us for food, or which we ensnare for our diversion, we shall be obliged to own that there is more of the savage in human nature than we are aware of.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“The middle years of parenthood are characterized by ambiguity. Our kids are no longer helpless, but neither are they independent. We are still active parents but we have more time now to concentrate on our personal needs. Our children’s world has expanded. It is not enclosed within a kind of magic dotted line drawn by us. Although we are still the most important adults in their lives, we are no longer the only significant adults.”
—Ruth Davidson Bell. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 3 (1978)