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Old 10-15-2006, 02:05 PM
mistofviolets mistofviolets is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 134
15 yr Member
mistofviolets mistofviolets is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 134
15 yr Member
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Umm...Aspergillus *is* in the food supply.

Its commonly found in corn. and Aspergillus niger is fermented to create citric acid ("no corn protein left") leading some of us well-read corn sufferers to wonder if its really corn or the aspergillus attacking us?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid

Quote:
In 1917, the American food chemist James Currie discovered that certain strains of the mold Aspergillus niger could be efficient citric acid producers, and Pfizer began industrial-level production using this technique two years later.
There are different strains of aspergillus, some toxic and some not toxic (IE, safe for human exposure)

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medi...p?newsid=28830

Quote:
The remedy may lie in the idea of US researchers Dr. Peter J. Cotty, which is both simple and ingenious. "In addition to the dangerous strain aspergillus flavus there are also others which cannot produce any toxin," the Bonn plant pathologist Dr. Sebastian Kiewnick explains. "Cotty propagated this non-toxic strain of aspergillus on grains of corn and spread the mould-infected grains in fields of cotton. As a result, the non-toxic strain was present in substantially larger amounts and was thus able to almost entirely supplant the toxic variety." The success was overwhelming: aflatoxin infection of the cotton cobs dropped from an average of 1,000 ppb (parts per billion) to below 20 ppb, thereby lying within the US safety limit for animal food - cotton seeds serve as food e.g. for dairy cattle.
Quote:
"It can scarcely be prevented that maize or nuts will be infected to a certain extent with brown mould," Sebastian Kiewnick emphasises. "We can only influence which strain of aspergillus grows on it: a dangerous producer of toxins - or the non-toxic variant."
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