Edible bird nest is a nest made from saliva of swiftlet (Aerodramus fuciphagus). In term of food safety, nitrite is one of chemical hazards that should be checked in edible bird nest (EBN) which can affect human health. Occurance of nitrite in edible bird nest is determined from its level in uncleaned EBN and cleaning process. This preliminary study was aimed to check level of nitrite in edible bird nest taken from swiftlet houses in South Sulawesi. The nitrite analysis using spectrophotometer showed that nitrite content is varied among swiftlet houses ranged from 4.7 µg/g to 164.4 µg/g. This result showed that most EBN sample in uncleaned South Sulawesi edible bird nest is below the limit of nitrite content regulated by Indonesian government which is 125 µg/g. This finding also indicates that good farming practice should be introduced into swiftlet farmers.

Manusia adalah salah satu dari makhluk Allah swt. di samping memiliki sejumlah kekurangan, manusia memiliki suatu kelebihan, berupa potensi berkembang, potensi membangun peradaban dan kebudayaannya, karena padanya ia dianugerahi "akal." Manusia diciptakan oleh Allah swt. sebagai 'abid' dan sebagai khalifah-Nya di atas bumi. Sebagai 'abid', manusia diharuskan untuk tunduk dan patuh hanya kepada Allah swt., mengandung arti bahwa keseluruhan jiwa dan aktifitas manusia haruslah sejalan dengan izin dan perintah Allah swt. Sebagai khalifah Allah, manusia memiliki dua fungsi utama, yaitu fungsi kepemimpinan, yaitu Jabatan Formal dan Fungsi Kepribadian Muslim. Bagi yang mendapat amanah Jabatan Formal, ia harus menjalankan amanah Allah dalam wujud merealisasikan hukum-hukum Allah, menerapkan keadilan, kebenaran dan melindungi seluruh masyarakat dan wilayah yang dipimpinnya. Fungsi Kepribadian Muslim mewajibkan seluruh muslim tak terkecuali untuk menjaga melestarikan dan mengembangkan kemakmuran di bumi sebagai hajat hidup bagi semua. Kealpaan menjalankan fungsi-fungsi tersebut berarti kealpaan dalam menunaikan amanah Allah di atas bumi, yang sesungguhnya amanah tersebut adalah amanah terpokok yang seharusnya menjadi perhatian utama dalam hidup manusia.

Edible bird nest (EBN) is an excellent export commodity from Indonesia and South East Asia countries. To keep the quality assurance of EBN, aflatoxin analysis should be conducted to check its biological hazard. This research was conducted to develop a rapid, sensitive and validated method to detect aflatoxin contamination in EBN. This study showed that in-house AF.2 IAC containing AF.2 monoclonal antibody can be used for EBN sample clean-up. Validation methods were measured using parameters which were recovery (86.5-96.3% for AFB1, 87.8-98.5% for AFB2, 82.8-100.5 for AFG1, 79.8-94.3% for AFG2), intra-day repeatability RSD (⩽ 6.4% for all aflatoxins), linearity (⩾ 0.99997 for all aflatoxins), limit of detection (0.26 ng/g for AFB1, 0.04 ng/g AFB2, 0.26 ng/g for AFG1, 0.03 ng/g for AFG2) and limit of quantification (0.79 ng/g for AFB1, 0.13 ng/g AFB2, 0.81 ng/g for AFG1, 0.09 ng/g for AFG2). These results showed that both recovery test of spiked PBS and recovery test of 3-level aflatoxin concentration spiked IBN were good, thus in-house AF.2 IAC can be used to analyze aflatoxins in EBN. Based on validation parameters such as recovery test, intra-day repeatability, linearity, LOD, and LOQ which had been tested, our method can be used for validated method for aflatoxin analysis in EBN. Further analysis of aflatoxins in edible bird nest will be reported separately.