In the current study, 109 commercial nut samples were collected from different Korean markets and analyzed for the contamination of 5 different mycotoxins (aflatoxin, ochratoxin A, deoxynivalenol, zearalenone, and T-2 toxin) using ELISA kits. The results revealed that the most frequently detected mycotoxin was zearalenone (n=36, 33%), followed by aflatoxin (n=31, 28.4%) and ochratoxin A (n=30, 27.5%). Deoxynivalenol and T-2 toxin were also detected in 22 (20.3%) samples, respectively. Among 109 nut samples, 33 samples (30.3%) were contaminated only with one kind of mycotoxin, whereas 43 samples had at least 2 kinds of mycotoxins. Two samples were contaminated with as many as 4 different mycotoxins, and they were both walnuts. Although the monitoring results revealed the amount of aflatoxin contamination was under the safety criteria, there is no current safety guideline for other kinds of mycotoxins or multiple contaminations in Korea. Therefore, further studies should be performed to reveal the distribution of mycotoxin in different foods and propose appropriate safety guidelines for Korean markets.

Recently there has been an increasing amount of foreign livestock products distributed in the domestic market due to the market opening. Some vicious dealers sell the foreign beef in the trade name of the native beef during the final distribution step to arouse the social criticism frequently. In this report, we investigated a method to distinguish the native beef from the foreign one scientifically using the PCR-RAPD, a recent gene technique. Hygienical safety was also examined using a microbiological test for toxicity of Escherichia coli O157:H7 and the food poisoning bacteria. The conditions of DNA amplification for the PCR analysis were 1 × Taq polymerise buffer, 1.5 mM MgCl₂, 50 uM dNTP, 100 ng primers, 2.5 unit Taq polymerise and 5-20 ng template DNA, with the final volume of 50 Etl. The size of the amplified product was detected mostly in the range of 0.5-2.0 kbp. The size of DNA, gene marking factor, which could be a criterion distinguishing the native beef from the foreign one, appeared approximately 1.2 kbp. The native beef was distinguished from the foreign beef with more than 90% of confidence by the gene marking factor. This method was expected to be useful in the breed discrimination between the native beef and the foreign one. The hygienical test results showed that, fortunately, neither Salmonella spp. and Listeria monocytogenes which form a principal cause of the food poisoning nor Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli : EHEC which have provoked a recent social disturbance, were detected at all.