Abstract: The importance of food safety as an integral component of food security was recognized by many governments already before the 1992 International Conference on Nutrition and the 1996 World Food Summit. Recently the EU enacted regulation on food safety (178 /2002). The quality and safety of food may be threatened by a host of factors, including natural toxins. Of the large spectrum of natural toxins, mycotoxins are among the most widely studied and raise considerable concern, because of their ubiquity and potential deleterious effects on human and animal health. Mycotoxins are produced by certain fungi, which, under favorable temperature and humidity conditions, invade a wide range of agricultural crops in the field, and during post - harvest stages of production. In 1994 the EU started the harmonization process on standardization of certain mycotoxins in foods after its Scientific Committee on Food (SCF) expressed an opinion on several mycotoxins: aflatoxins, ochratoxin A, patulin and deoxynivalenol[1].

Key words: Aflatoxins , Ochratoxin , Patulin , Fusarium, Ergot , Methods of analysis and sampling