Regulations on food safety and hygiene in the EU market - How to searching and updating
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The entry into force of the EVFTA Agreement and its implementation have given Vietnam's key agricultural products a significant competitive advantage over other Asian countries. Besides bringing great opportunities, the EVFTA also brings challenges to Vietnam's agricultural export sector, which requires greater development of the agricultural sector. Although there have been many advancements in the industry, over the past year we have also encountered many difficulties with violations of the EU's food safety regulations, warnings, refusal to import and return,… causing great losses to businesses.
In order to ensure food quality according to EU regulations, what regulations should businesses and people pay attention to? Eurofins would like to introduce to you some key EU food safety regulations as well as some notes when you look at them.
Main regulations in the EU market
When exporting agricultural products, fruits, or any food products, we must always pay attention to and meet the criteria in the following regulations:
- Regulation (EC) No 396/2005: regulating the limit of residues of pesticides in food
- Regulation (EC) No 1881/2006: regulates the limits of residues of pollutants in food
- Regulation EC) No 2073/2005: regulation to limit microbiological contamination in food
- Regulation (EU) 2019/1793: regulates the frequency of control and health certificate
How to look up regulations and some points to pay attention to
How to look up regulations
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After knowing the "keyword" of the main regulations on food safety regulations of the EU market, how can I find and view the content of the regulations on the EU food law system? |
Here are instructions on how to access and view the content of each regulation.
1. Regulation (EC) No 396/2005 of the European Parliament and of the Council of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 February 2005 on maximum residue levels of pesticides in or on food and feed of plant and animal origin and amending Council Directive 91/414/EEC.
Access the website and you will see a display with the following content:
- Active substances: used to check the status of an active substance being allowed to use or not, the effective date and expiration date, the history of that active ingredient and the limit of that substance for each type of product. You can see the latest updates for a specific active ingredient.
- Food products: Users can find a specific product that they are interested in and see all the MRLs of the active ingredients applied to that product.
- Pesticides residues: used to look up a specific active ingredient for a specific product or many products, the history of the MRL regulation of that substance, and especially you can download all the data with an excel file very handy for the search. Here you can view the latest regulatory MRLs for that active ingredient.
- Emergency Authorizations: here shows the product protection plans of EU members and will be issued in the future.
So, depending on the purpose of use, you can choose the item you need to see.
2. Commission Regulation (EC) No 1881/2006 of 19 December 2006 setting maximum levels for certain contaminants in foodstuffs
- Mycotoxins (aflatoxins, ochratoxin A, fusarium-toxins, patulin, citrinin)
- Metals (cadmium, lead, mercury, inorganic tin, arsenic)
- Dioxins and Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs)
- Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs)
- 3-MCPD
- Melamine
- Erucic acid
- Nitrates
Access the website and here you can see display like below:
Click on the PDF or HTML icon in the “EN” column to view the content of the regulation (English version).
In the ANNEX section, see the maximum ingredient limits for specific products.
Example: Find the maximum contaminant limit regulation for spice products (spices)
- Step 1: open regulation (EC) 1881/2006 according to the instructions above
- Step 2: Find information with the keyword “spices”
- Step 3: List the criteria for this sample background
| CRITERIA | THE MAXIMUM LIMIT |
|
Total Aflatoxin |
10 µg/kg |
|
Aflatoxin B1 |
5 µg/kg |
|
Ochratoxin A |
15 µg/kg |
|
PAHs |
Benzo(a)pyrene 10 µg/kg Sum of benzo(a)pyrene, benz(a)anthracene, benzo(b)fluoranthene and chrysene 50 µg/kg |
Thus, when exporting pepper spices to the EU, the group of contamination criteria they need to control must be lower than the maximum allowable threshold of the regulation.
Note: to see your latest updates, please click on the line highlighted in yellow and circled as below
3. Commission Regulation (EC) No 2073/2005 of 15 November 2005 on microbiological criteria for foodstuffs.
This EC regulates the maximum limit of microbiological contamination in food, regulated food groups include:
- Meat and their products
- Milk and dairy products
- Egg products
- Fishery products
- Vegetables, fruits and their products
In addition, the EC specifies the method of sampling and how to prepare the sample for analysis.
- Sampling at slaughterhouses, meat production facilities, fresh meat...
- How to take samples for sprouts.
4. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/1793 of 22 October 2019 on the temporary increase of official controls and emergency measures governing the entry into the Union of certain goods from certain third countries implementing Regulations (EU) 2017/625 and (EC) No 178/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council and repealing Commission Regulations (EC) No 669/2009, (EU) No 884/2014, (EU) 2015/175, (EU) 2017/186 and (EU) 2018/1660
This is a very important regulation that directly affects the procedures for exporting goods to the EU market, the main content includes the following parts:
- Regulation of inspection frequency after entry into the EU for a number of specific items and criteria to be controlled.
A health certificate is required when exporting to the EU for products covered by this EU.
Read more related news
- How to read and use the nutrition facts labels
- Analysis of Ethylene oxide in agricultural products and food
- Ammonium NH4 contamination in water: Current status and Solutions
- Why should control the toxin acrylamide?
- Pesticide products containing Chlorpyrifos-ethyl, Fipronil have been banned in Vietnam
- Risk of Clostridium Botulinum poisoning from canned food
- Dioxin control in animal feed
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