The 2019 European Union report on pesticide residues in food

Under European Union legislation (Article 32, Regulation (EC) No 396/2005), the EFSA provides an annual report which examines pesticide residue levels in foods on the European market. This report is based on data from the official national control activities carried out by EU Member States, Iceland...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:EFSA journal 2021-04, Vol.19 (4), p.e06491-n/a
Main Authors: Carrasco Cabrera, Luis, Medina Pastor, Paula
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
acute
Barley
chronic
Commodities
Consumer protection
Control systems
Diet
dietary exposure
European Union
Food
Food products
food safety
Health risks
Legislation
maximum residue levels
national monitoring programme
Natural & organic foods
Pesticide residues
Pesticides
Residues
Risk assessment
Scientific Report
System effectiveness
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Under European Union legislation (Article 32, Regulation (EC) No 396/2005), the EFSA provides an annual report which examines pesticide residue levels in foods on the European market. This report is based on data from the official national control activities carried out by EU Member States, Iceland and Norway and includes a subset of data from the EU‐coordinated control programme which uses a randomised sampling strategy. For 2019, 96.1% of the overall 96,302 samples analysed fell below the maximum residue level (MRL), 3.9% exceeded this level, of which 2.3% were non‐compliant, i.e. samples exceeding the MRL after taking the measurement uncertainty into account. For the subset of 12,579 samples analysed as part of the EU‐coordinated control programme, 2.0% exceeded the MRL and 1.0% were non‐compliant. To assess acute and chronic risk to consumer health, dietary exposure to pesticide residues was estimated and compared with health‐based guidance values. The findings suggest that the residue levels for the food commodities analysed are unlikely to pose any concern for consumer health. However, a number of recommendations are proposed to increase the effectiveness of European control systems, thereby continuing to ensure a high level of consumer protection throughout the EU. This publication is linked to the following EFSA Supporting Publications article: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/sp.efsa.2021.EN-6487/full
ISSN:1831-4732
1831-4732
2314-9396
DOI:10.2903/j.efsa.2021.6491