The 2023 European Union report on pesticide residues in food

Abstract

Under European Union legislation (Article 32, Regulation (EC) No 396/2005), the European Food Safety Authority publishes an annual report assessing the pesticide residue levels in food. In 2023, as part of the EU-coordinated multiannual control programme subset, 13,246 samples placed on the European market were analysed, with a 1.0% found to be non-compliant. Risk-based sampling procedures were used for the remaining 132,793 samples with a 2.0% non-compliant rate. Both dietary acute and chronic risk to consumers' health were estimated providing the probabilities of exceedance of the health-based guidance values (HBGV) for the pesticides in food by the different subpopulation of European consumers. This meant dropping the deterministic assessment used in the past. Overall, the dietary risk was found to be very low for most of the EU subpopulation groups. Recommendations were provided to risk managers to increase the effectiveness of European control systems and to ensure a high level of consumer protection throughout the EU.

Keywords: European Union; acute; chronic; dietary exposure; food safety; maximum residue levels; national monitoring programme; pesticide residues; probability; risk assessment.

FIGURE 1

General process implemented for the probabilistic estimation of exposure to single substances.