Climate change effects on aflatoxins in the dairy supply chain

Climate change is estimated to result into increased temperatures and rainfall in general, with more drought periods and heavy showers, in Europe. These effects are expected to affect the presence of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) in maize grown in Europe, and might impact aflatoxin M1 (AFM1) in milk as well.

Three different climate models, one AFB1 forecasting model, and five transfer models, as published in literature, were used. Climate models considered were DMI, ETHZ, METO with 30 simulated years for 2030, and data from 2005-2017 as the baseline. Monte Carlo simulation with 10000 iterations was used to account for uncertainty and variation in input model parameters.