ReviewDioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls contamination in poultry liver related to food safety - A review

The present article reviews the most important scientific literature on dioxins and PCBs found in poultry liver and their relation with food safety and consumers' health. Dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are persistent organic pollutants with high chemical stability; they are lipophilic compounds and they are not destroyed by microbial, photochemical, chemical or thermal degradation. Dioxins and PCBs are ubiquitous environmental contaminants, which are present in all marine plant and animals, birds, mammals and humans and bioaccumulate through the food chain. In the last years, there has been concern regarding food contamination with different chemical substances and their effect on food safety. More particularly, at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, there were a series of incidents related to dioxin and PCBs, which directly affected human or contaminated the soil and accumulated in feed and then in food products, such as poultry liver. It was shown in case of dioxin incident that tetra and penta-chlorinated congeners (the most toxic ones) accumulates selectively in poultry livers. Maximal concentrations have been fixed in the European legislation for dioxins and PCBs in food from animal origin, in order to protect the consumer. Data about background poultry liver contamination are scarce and the few available show levels below the legal limit for dioxins, but data are still lacking for DL-PCBs.