Homegrown seed oils and safety (afla toxins)

Heya all! We grew a field of sunflowers this year, hand collected the flower heads and hand stripped the seeds. They have been sitting in a few barrels for a month or two now inside our house. I finally got the manual Piteba seed oil press going and produced a nice black oil out of the first batch of sunflowers.

The only problem is - I have read about afla-toxins - what do people do about this? I know you can test for it but I have not been able to find any cheap ways to do it. As everyone knows, they can be deadly in high doses and in low doses can cause liver cancer.

How is everyone approaching this? Am I worrying too much? Or...?

Thanks!

the cheapest aflatoxin tests i’ve found are something like $150 for 20 or 25. not super cheap but if you bulk your yearly production together before testing, not super expensive per amount tested. definitely nice to have the peace of mind.

greg mosser wrote:the cheapest aflatoxin tests i’ve found are something like $150 for 20 or 25. not super cheap but if you bulk your yearly production together before testing, not super expensive per amount tested. definitely nice to have the peace of mind.

Thanks! I cannot find any tests online for some reason.

I just read about aflatoxins for the first time after reading your post.

My take is you're probably okay if you practice good storage hygiene. Keep your seeds dry and avoid the damp conditions needed for any molds to grow and you'll probably be fine. A hygrometer in your storage area is likely to be at least as useful as specific aflatoxin tests. If you see or suspect mold on your stores, consider disposal.

Take that with a grain of salt, but that is my critical reading of the situation based on the wikipedia article.

the two companies i found that make qualitative testers (just over or under a given threshold - european standards are twice as stringent as the u.s. ones) are romer labs and vicam. vicam was more responsive to my questions and probably has better customer service. their products are probably comparable. you can’t just order them, though, there’s some kind of application process.

agreed, though, if nothing you’re using ever touched the ground, you’re probably looking pretty good.

L. Johnson wrote:I just read about aflatoxins for the first time after reading your post.

My take is you're probably okay if you practice good storage hygiene. Keep your seeds dry and avoid the damp conditions needed for any molds to grow and you'll probably be fine. A hygrometer in your storage area is likely to be at least as useful as specific aflatoxin tests. If you see or suspect mold on your stores, consider disposal.

Take that with a grain of salt, but that is my critical reading of the situation based on the wikipedia article.

Thanks! Yes, those measures are just what you should do anyway with any grain, seed etc. that you harvest - esp. on a larger scale. When we bale our horse hay, we test the bales for moisture, since they can be a fire risk but also mold. The problem with aflatoxins is that the molds are invisible... :(

They have been sitting in a few barrels for a month or two now inside

I would like to ask what method you used to dry your seeds?

when we grew ours the deer got to the plants before we had a chance to process them.

I still have lots of seeds to do something with.

Anne Miller wrote:

They have been sitting in a few barrels for a month or two now inside

I would like to ask what method you used to dry your seeds?

when we grew ours the deer got to the plants before we had a chance to process them.

I still have lots of seeds to do something with.

They dried on the stalks and we simply collected them.