 Afratoxin maafuqa karutiyuani, een afratoxin maafuqa kecha kwa kutiyuani. Haqniaresi kwa najum니다 kama kutiyuani. Afratoxin maafuqa maafuqa kwa kutiyuani. Wazimizi na zotia kwa najumini. Kakawewa nukita nana espakaya kanya tuwa kwa wazimini. Fakafuqa kwa kutiyuani Afratoxin maafuqa karutiyuani. kakawewa nakaresi kwa nakaresi kwa kutiyuani. Iniliki, ukaikaupana asujaa. Iaquiaa, kakawewa nakaresi, gwafus as the bigger problem lying underneath the iceberg that is of the acute aflatoxin exposure. When the animals are fed aflatoxin contaminated feed there is a risk of transmission of the aflatoxin into the animal product. A very small portion is carried over into the meat and the eggs but the major problem is that some percentage are carried over into milk of their cows and these are then consumed by people. In Kenya for example the milk consumption is very high, more than 100 litres per person and year almost five times as high as other african countries and this milk consumption is focused to very susceptible categories such as nursing or pregnant mothers or young children where the health effects can actually be more serious than for other people. CDC here in Kenya is working in close association with the Ministry of Health to better the surveillance systems especially in relation to public health working with the district disease surveillance officers who go out to the villages to collect samples for analysis at the national public health labs. We are looking to do a complete risk assessment from the aflatoxin levels in the feed served to the cattle over to the milk and to the milk consumers in order to be able to form a background for policy makers and to really provide a scientific background for this problem. We will also look at cost benefits of potential interventions in the dairy value chains and also look at the possibility of using probiotic lactic acid bacteria as a possibility to inhibit fungal growth and aflatoxin binding. Biocontrol is one of these strategies of managing aflatoxin and we feel strongly about it because it is a preventive mechanism and it targets the fungus that produces the aflatoxin while the crop is still in the field. We have a product that we are now working on called Aflacif KE0, so far tested in about 850 farmers fields. Most of those are found in eastern Kenya because that is where you have several hotspots or aflatoxin problems. In Nigeria where the product has already received provisional registration, on farm trials resulted to aflatoxin reduction of over 70% in many cases over 80% and even in some cases we got 90% reduction in aflatoxin. So we do know that it works. The beauty of the technology is that it targets to address the issue of aflatoxin along the valley chain. That means we apply pre-havis but we also get positive effects post-havis. But also secondly, it is not an input that the farmer has to use every season. We call that the carryover effect because that translates to positive benefits in terms of cost for the farmer. What we have done is we have established a production capacity building platform so that African scientists and their partners can tackle this very complex problem and we've made great advances towards that. As part of the project we're looking at four things. First of all, we need to be able to see the enemy in order to defeat it. So we're working on appropriate diagnostics both for the lab and for the fields so that we can test for the aflatoxin. Part of this is also appropriate sampling procedures. Another thing that we're doing is we're working on knowing exactly where to plant which maize varieties. We're working with the national maize breeders of Kenya and Tanzania to really develop varieties that will accumulate lower aflatoxin levels. In addition to that, we want to understand the scope of the problem. So we're working with collaborators in Australia, Kenya, Tanzania, U.S. and South Africa to develop risk maps and these maps are based on on-farm surveys and they'll tell us what is the risk of aflatoxins in maize in the given year that we look at? But furthermore, what are farmers growing and how can they change that? So they're going to be tools that can be interrogated by policy makers and other decision makers so they can pick the right interventions without having to spend the resources beforehand to test them in the field. Let's get our best bets.