Occurrence of Fumonisin B in Imported and Local Corn

s: Corn based-snacks which are a type of food that very popular among children and the contamination of this type of food may be hazardous to those susceptible young age consumers. Corn is the main source of contamination in this food. Fumonisins are among the hazardous mycotoxin that may exist in corn. Therefore, the aim of this study was to asses the level of Fumonisin B and fungal contamination in 15 different snack 1 types (45 samples) of imported and locally produced snacks in order to determine the source of contamination whether it is from the field or during processing. HPLC was used to determine the level of Fumonisin B and the 1 fungal count was also determined using malt extract agar medium. The results showed that no fungal contamination was detected in all samples indicating the good manufacturing practices were followed in the production of these types of snacks. However, 24% of the total collected samples were positive for Fumonisin B . All the positive samples were imported snacks and the positive samples constitute 40% of the imported 1 samples. Among the positive samples 50% were exceeding the permissible limits of both the FDA and EU. The country source of contaminated samples was from Malaysia and USA. However, other samples from Malaysia and USA were free of Fumonisin B . Positive samples were found to be in certain types and all the samples in 1 these types were positive with a close concentration of Fumonisin B . This means that contamination is a type 1