July 8, 2009

TNO has developed a quantitative, scientifically sound method that estimates the transfer of contaminants in feed to concentrations in edible animal products called the TNO feed additive transfer database.

The database consists for the largest part of literature data from over 300 publications. All these publications review the risks of different feed additives on consumer exposure.

The main part of the data comes from "unwanted substances" in animal feed, including herbicides, heavy metals, mycotoxins, dioxins, furans, PCB's, PAK's, hormones and veterinary medicines.

The database can also be used for feed additives and not only for contaminates.

In total, 4,000 transfer factors are present in the database coming from over 250 substances. During an evaluation, a distinction can be made for animal specie, levels of animal feed and feed duration. With the different filters, more specific questions will include in the total evaluation. However, fish is not included.

The risk assessment of a feed additive results in a "transfer factor". This means the amount of the additive that is transferred to a product intended for human consumption.

Apart from the database, this can be combined with consumption data to gain a total risk assessment of human exposure to the product. This risk then is compared with the maximum allowed intake of a certain substance to gain a good understanding whether the substance should be qualified as safe or unsafe.