by Clement Soulet, Global Category Management – Anti-Mycotoxin Agents, Cargill, France
Across global feed operations, mycotoxins continue to quietly erode animal performance and profitability — often without triggering regulatory alarms. Reduced feed efficiency, compromised immunity and reproductive losses linked to low level contamination are frequently absorbed as background noise in production systems rather than recognised as a controllable risk factor. This is because mycotoxin contamination is still too often treated as an occasional problem tied to isolated crop failures.
Longterm surveillance data tells a different story. While year-to-year variation is inevitable, mycotoxin pressure has become a structural feature of global feed production, shaped by climate variability, global trade flows and increasingly complex ingredient sourcing. Cargill’s 2025 Global Mycotoxin Report confirms this reality.
Based on nearly 390,000 analyses conducted across 41 countries, it represents one of the largest and most consistent mycotoxin surveillance efforts in the feed industry. The results demonstrate that mycotoxin exposure continues to affect a significant proportion of feed ingredients worldwide, with direct and ongoing implications for livestock health, performance and profitability.
In 2025, 71 percent of tested samples contained at least one detectable mycotoxin and 34 percent exceeded performance-based risk thresholds—levels associated with measurable impacts on animal performance. These figures are broadly consistent with previous years, reinforcing that mycotoxins are not a short-term spike, but a persistent production risk that must be managed proactively rather than reactively.
Reframing how mycotoxins are evaluated
A defining feature of the Cargill Global Mycotoxin Report is its focus on performance-based risk, rather than regulatory limits alone. Regulatory thresholds remain essential for feed safety and compliance, but they do not always reflect the contamination levels at which biological and economic losses begin to occur.
Performance based thresholds address a more practical question faced daily by nutritionists and producers: At what level does a mycotoxin start to impair animal performance? These thresholds are tailored to species, production stage and specific mycotoxins, and are established through in vivo trials, meta-analyses and modelling approaches that correlate contamination levels with productivity losses.
This perspective represents an important shift. It moves mycotoxin management beyond a binary ‘compliant or noncompliant’ mindset toward a more economically relevant understanding of risk. By translating analytical results into expected performance impact, producers can better align testing data with formulation decisions, ingredient selection and mitigation strategies.
A persistent threat: DON, FUM and ZEN
Despite regional variability, three mycotoxins continue to dominate the global performance risk profile: deoxynivalenol (DON), fumonisins (FUM) and zearalenone (ZEN).
In 2025, DON remained the most prevalent and highest mycotoxin performance risk globally, with more than half of analyses exceeding performance-based thresholds. FUM showed a notable increase in risk compared to the previous year, while ZEN remained consistently elevated across multiple regions.
These toxins are primarily associated with cereals and corn-based ingredients that form the backbone of most feed formulations. Their impact is rarely limited to acute clinical signs, which typically occur with mycotoxin contaminations above regulatory and safety thresholds. Instead, mycotoxin contaminations above performance thresholds are commonly expressed through potential subclinical effects, reduced feed intake, impaired gut integrity, compromised immune resilience and lower reproductive performance—that are difficult to isolate but costly over time.
Multi-mycotoxin exposure: The new reality
One of the most significant insights from the 2025 dataset is that multi-mycotoxin exposure has become the norm, not the exception. Almost half of the samples tested for multiple mycotoxins contained three or more of these contaminants simultaneously.
This is critical because mycotoxins rarely act alone. Co‑contamination can arise when a single mould produces multiple toxins, when different fungal species infect the same crop or when compound feeds combine multiple contaminated ingredients. As a result, animals are typically exposed to mixtures of mycotoxins at low to moderate levels.
Biologically, these mixtures can have additive or even synergistic effects. For example, combined exposure to DON and ZEN can compromise gut barrier integrity more severely than either toxin alone. Concurrent exposure to multiple toxins can overload liver detoxification pathways, impair immune responses and reduce vaccine efficacy, increasing overall disease susceptibility.
Focusing exclusively on individual toxins or regulatory thresholds therefore risks underestimating the true performance impact. Total mycotoxin load and interaction effects must be considered if risk is to be accurately assessed and managed.
Regional variation demands local interpretation
Although mycotoxin pressure is global, the report highlights substantial regional differences in prevalence and risk profiles. North America and China continue to face high DON pressure. Central and South America show elevated FUM risk, particularly in corn and forage. In Europe, DON, FUM and ZEN remain dominant concerns. In Asia, aflatoxin (AFL) pressure increased compared with the previous year, while the Middle East and Africa exhibited a notable rise in ZEN risk.
These patterns underscore a key principle: global averages provide context, but effective management must be locally adapted. Ingredient sourcing, climate conditions, storage practices and formulation strategies vary widely by region, as do the resulting mycotoxin profiles. Applying uniform mitigation or testing strategies across regions at risks both under‑ and over‑responding to actual performance threats.
From surveillance to action
Given its persistent nature, mycotoxin risk management must be treated as a continuous process, not a one-time intervention. Effective programs typically follow four interconnected steps: identify, assess, manage and monitor.
Identification begins with targeted testing, focusing on the mycotoxins and ingredients most relevant to each region and production system. Assessment requires interpreting results through a performance-based lens, taking multi-mycotoxin exposure into account. Management should then be risk-proportionate, combining ingredient selection, formulation adjustments where feasible and targeted mitigation solutions. Finally, ongoing monitoring is essential, as mycotoxin pressure evolves with climate, sourcing and market dynamics.
The value of surveillance lies not merely in detection but in anticipation—using data to act before performance losses become visible.
Managing impact, not risk elimination
The key takeaway from the 2025 data is not cause for alarm but for realism. Mycotoxin pressure remains structurally high and is unlikely to diminish in the near term. Climate variability and increasingly complex global supply chains will continue to shape risk profiles.
For feed manufacturers and livestock producers, the challenge is not to eliminate mycotoxins entirely—an unrealistic goal—but to understand and manage their performance impact effectively. In this context, competitive advantage increasingly comes from better interpretation of data, not simply more testing. Combining experienced technical expertise, robust data platforms that translate surveillance into actionable insight and targeted solutions designed to mitigate risk allows producers to move from reaction to prevention. When people, analytics and products work together, mycotoxin management becomes not just a defensive measure, but a lever to protect animal health, increase productivity, and improve overall production efficiency in an operating environment where mycotoxins are no longer an exception, but an expected reality.
