ORIGINAL PAPER Co-occurrence of mycotoxins in swine feed produced in Portugal Inês Almeida & Hermínia Marina Martins & Sara Santos & José M. Costa & Fernando Bernardo Received: 17 December 2010 / Revised: 22 March 2011 / Accepted: 23 March 2011 / Published online: 19 April 2011 # Society for Mycotoxin Research and Springer 2011 Abstract A total of 404 samples of commercial swine feed from Portugal feed mills were analysed by HPLC methods for the presence of mycotoxins: 277 samples of feed for fattening pigs were analysed for ochratoxin A (OTA), zearalenone (ZEA), and deoxynivalenol (DON), and 127 samples of feed for sows were analysed for ZEA and fumonisins (FB 1 +FB 2 ). Concerning feed for fattening pigs, 21 (7.6%) samples were positive for OTA, (2–6.8 μg/kg), 69 (24.9%) were positive for ZEA (5–73 μg/kg), and 47 (16.9%) were positive for DON (100–864 μg/kg). In feed for sows, the results showed 29.9% of positive samples for ZEA (5–57.7 μg/kg) and 8.7% positive samples for FB 1 and FB 2 (50–391.4 μg/kg). Co-occurrence of DON/ZEA was found most frequently, but simultaneous contamination with OTA/ZEA and OTA/DON was also found. Keywords Feed . Swine . Ochratoxin A . Zearalenone . Deoxynivalenol . Fumonisins Introduction Cereals are a major source of protein in animal diets, becoming economically important in the feed chain, due to the lack of national supplies and also the fact that their imports from 3rd countries relies on genetically modified varieties not always authorised at communitarian level, which conditions their availability. Those feed materials are known to be commonly colonised specially by Aspergillus, Fusarium, Penicillium and Alternaria, and other mould species, some of which are able to produce a large range of mycotoxins, which can be hazardous to animal health (Frisvad and Lund 1993). Compound feedstuffs have an important role in swine husbandry, especially in intensive production which totally depends on them to fulfil animal needs. Although fungi contamination causes significant economic losses regarding deterioration of feed, mycotoxin contamination can cause acute and chronic mycotoxicoses in animals which causes decreasing swine productive and reproductive indexes, and also increasing the incidence of viral and bacterial infections by diminishing of immune response. OTA is one of the most toxic secondary metabolites (Jakić-Dimić et al. 2009), known to cause mycotoxic porcine nephropathy (MPN) (Golinski et al. 1983). OTA is also immunosuppressive resulting in higher susceptibility to subclinical infections (Veldman et al. 1992). DON causes feed refusal, emesis and growth depression on swine (Vesonder et al. 1976). DON is also an inhibitor of protein and DNA synthesis affects food intake, body weight and suppresses humoral and cellular immune function (Pestka and Bondy 1990). ZEA has oestrogenic properties (Gouveia et al. 2005), and clinical manifes- tations can include vulvar swelling, reddening, rectal and vaginal prolapse (Rainey et al. 1991). According to Flowers et al. (1987), sows fed 20 mg of ZEA, presented prolonged oestrus cycles, and prolonged tax of inter- estrus, ranging between 28 and 74 days. It also leads to pseudo-gestation, significant reduction of conception tax, reduction of the size of the litter and piglets stillborn or weak (Malekinejad et al. 2006). FB 1 has been identified as I. Almeida : J. M. Costa Direcção Geral de Veterinária, Largo da Academia Nacional de Bela Artes, nº 2, 1249–105 Lisboa, Portugal H. M. Martins (*) : S. Santos INRB-Laboratório Nacional de Investigação Veterinária, Estrada de Benfica, nº 701, 1500–610 Lisboa, Portugal e-mail: marina.martins@lniv.min-agricultura.pt F. Bernardo Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária, Pólo Universitário da Ajuda, Rua Professor Cid dos Santos, 1300–417 Lisboa, Portugal Mycotox Res (2011) 27:177–181 DOI 10.1007/s12550-011-0093-8