March 12, 2015

expert reaction to EFSA report on pesticide residues and food safety

The European Food Safety Authority has released a report on the levels of pesticide residues in foods, reporting that more than 97% of food analysed had pesticide levels which fell within legal limits, and around 55% of food analysed had undetectable levels of pesticides.

Dr Oliver Jones, Lecturer in Environmental Chemistry at RMIT University Melbourne, said:

“I think the EFSA report makes positive reading for European foodies. The result of a detailed study, with thousands of samples from across the EU, it shows pesticide residues down across the board.

“Although it is a bit disappointing to see that non approved pesticides popped up in some samples, given that modern analytical instrumentation can detect pesticides down to the parts-per-trillion level and can test for hundreds of compounds at once, the fact that around half of samples contained no detectable pesticide traces at all and that nearly all of the remainder were well within the legal limit (which are purposely quite strict) is very encouraging”.

Declared interests

None declared

http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press/news/150312.htm