Demand for U.S. and South American corn will increase world-wide after high levels of aflatoxin were recently detected in Central European grain, traders, cargo surveyors and analysts in Singapore, Seoul, Geneva and Rotterdam said.

Europe is already embroiled in a scandal over horse meat in beef products and contaminated milk and animal feed.

"Several hundred thousand metric tons of corn to be sourced from Serbia, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria is currently being subject to stringent tests due to high aflatoxin levels and exporters have to source their shipments from other origins," a Geneva-based cargo surveyor said on the sidelines of an international grains conference here Thursday.

"Various parties involved are screening corn truck by truck and thousands of samples are being drawn out but the difficulty we face is that the entire aflatoxin tends to get concentrated in a handful of kernels and is therefore difficult to detect," a European surveyor involved in inspections said.

Some Central European samples were found to have between 50 ppm-100 ppm, .

The European Union permits aflatoxin levels of no more than 20 parts per million in feed-grade corn. Some Central European consignments were found to have between 50 ppm-100 ppm, traders and surveyors said/