Residues Compliance Continues to Rise, Pesticide Report Show
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published its third Annual Report on Pesticide Residues, which gives an overview of pesticide residues found in food in the European Union during 2009 and assesses the exposure of consumers to those residues through their diets. The report shows that compliance rates continue to rise, with 97.4% of the samples analysed falling within the permitted Maximum Residue Levels (MRLs), a rise of about one percentage point since 2008.
Nov 9 2011 --- The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published its third Annual Report on Pesticide Residues, which gives an overview of pesticide residues found in food in the European Union during 2009 and assesses the exposure of consumers to those residues through their diets. The report shows that compliance rates continue to rise, with 97.4% of the samples analysed falling within the permitted Maximum Residue Levels (MRLs), a rise of about one percentage point since 2008.
In the EU coordinated part of the monitoring programme, which is designed to collect directly comparable data from reporting countries and to enable dietary exposure assessment, 61.4% of samples were free of measurable pesticide residues. Compared with 2006, the last time the same food commodities of plant origin were analysed under the EU-coordinated programme, the MRL exceedance rate has fallen from 4.4% to 1.4%. EFSA said this could be partially ascribed to the harmonisation of MRLs, which came into force in September 2008, but other factors – such as the more effective use of legislation compelling producers and other industry players to implement safety systems, and changes in the pattern of pesticide use in Europe – may have contributed to the improvement.