## 3 Results and Discussion
Several articles reported that the AFM\({}_{1}\) contamination of raw milk can be influenced by the season. Indeed, milk samples collected during winter can be more contaminated by AFM\({}_{1}\) than those collected during summer. This relationship can be justifiable taking into account the low availability of fresh green feed in colder seasons which leads to the increased use of stored concentrated feedstuffs [46; 47]. Even in our study, most of samples with higher AFM\({}_{1}\) levels were collected during autumn and winter. In 2003, for the first time, Italy was faced with an outbreak related to the effects of climate change on cultivated crops. The summer was particularly dry and hot, with maize crops stressed by drought and lack of water, with the consequence of higher AFB\({}_{1}\) contamination [48]. Important repercussions occurred in the dairy industry, with significant levels of AFM\({}_{1}\) in milk. A similar situation occurred in Italy during the summer of 2012, and lasted until 2016, with an increase in the mean levels of AFM\({}_{1}\) in milk [49]. According to this scenario, in a twelve-year survey (2012-2023) in Puglia and Basilicata, AFM\({}_{1}\) contamination showed a substantial increase in 2012 and 2013. Indeed, while the mean contamination registered in other years was always below 10 ng/kg, the mean AFM\({}_{1}\) contamination rose to 29 ng/kg in 2012 and to 17 ng/kg in 2013. The highest number of registered non-compliant samples also belonged to these years: 44 out of 49 total non-compliant samples. As it regards a risk of exposure study, the values obtained for Margin of Exposure are reported in Table 3. Data elaboration was conducted taking as reference consumption data related to the 95 th percentile (P95), as made in the recent \"Risk assessment of aflat in food\" published by EFSA [39]. Indeed, if considering the mean consumption of different population classes, all MOE values resulted as higher than 10,000 and so did not represent a food safety risk (10,400 was the lowest value calculated, for children consumption under \"high exposure\" scenario). However, in risk assessment studies, P95 is usually adopted as a more protective measure for human health and food safety. As appreciable from Table 3,  
Figure 6: Number and relative percentage values of non-compliant samples by province of origin. all MOE values obtained under \"high exposure scenario\" were lower than 10,000 and so represented a food safety risk. These values were obtained by taking into account all \"non-compliant\" concentrations quantified during this survey, belonging to both raw (47) and processed (2) samples. This result confirmed the validity of legal limits set at the European level, the need of implementing official control, and the reliability and effectiveness of the analytical approach applied in this study. Regarding the \"most-likely exposure\" scenario, all MOE values resulted as lower than 10,000, with values of processed milk well higher than those calculated for raw milk, confirming the considerations reported above regarding the possible effect of processing on residual AFM1 levels. Thus, these last results confirm an overall low risk for food safety relating to AFM1 exposure from milk consumption, with reference to the south of Italy.