Agriculture ministry will partially offset losses which dairy farmers have incurred after dairy companies decided to suspend purchase of milk due to higher-than-prescribed levels of aflatoxin, Croatian Agriculture Minister Tihomir Jakovina said at a news conference in Zagreb on Sunday when he unveiled an HRK 5-million action plan to address this problem.
"The milk supplies which have not been purchased due to samples tested positively for this toxin will be shipped to three biomass plants in Slavonia where they will be safely destroyed," the minister said, stressing that there was no need to spill milk,
The minister said that farmers would also be offered assistance in cattle fodder as this was the main cause of the appearance of aflatoxins. The farms with the questionable milk will be given supplies of maize from state-run commodity trading agency to replace their own reserves. Aflatoxins are naturally occurring mycotoxins that are produced by many species of Aspergillus, a fungus. Aflatoxin-producing members of Aspergillus are common and widespread in nature. They can colonize and contaminate grain before harvest or during storage.
At his previous news conference on Friday the minister reported that commodity stock maize had been tested and was safe.
The minister announced the resumption of the purchase of milk supplies on Tuesday. Higher concentrations of mycotoxins have been detected in samples of milk taken from 400 dairy farms in eastern Croatia, that produce some 70,000 litres of raw milk daily.
Earlier on Sunday, the Bosnian Serb entity's authorities reported that large-scale checks had showed that elevated concentrations of aflatoxins were present in cattle fodder on 16 farms which was why the purchase of milk from those farms had been temporarily suspended. Serbia also reported similar problems with milk supplies earlier this week. Serbia's agriculture ministry stressed that an increase in concentrations of those toxins did not cause health problems.
