According to the latest report from the EU's Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF), the system demonstrated its efficiency at contributing to the safety of food in Europe again last year by exchanging information on the most serious risks for consumer health.
The 2015 annual report on the system's performance, which was published by the European Commission on Friday 26 August, puts forward 3,049 initial notifications, including 750 alert notifications, 378 information notifications requiring follow-up, 476 information notifications not requiring follow-up and 1,380 product rejection notifications at borders.
These initial notifications gave rise to 4,030 further notifications (+22.9% compared with 2014), which led either to a reminder, or to the withdrawal or seizure - or even destruction - of suspect food products.
Of the 3,049 risk notifications received by the Commission, 775 focused on a serious risk to health and the most frequently notified cases involved the presence of mercury in fish, aflotoxins in nuts (264 notifications, mostly from China with 96 notifications, and Egypt with 10 notifications), pistachios and dried figs from third countries, and salmonella in fruit and vegetables.
The report shows that the number of notifications involving pesticide residues (402, including 7 on feed for animals and just 34 for food products in the EU) continued to fall slightly.
Since 2015, 108 cases of potentially deliberate breaches of European law applicable to food and feed have been the subject of an exchange of information as part of the European Food Fraud Network (FFN), and 12 as part of the online Administrative Assistance and Cooperation (AAC) system. The suspected breaches mostly involve the bad labelling of ingredients, illegal export or treatment, or banned processes being applied to products.
The 2015 RASFF report can be consulted at:
http://ec.europe.eu/food/safety/docs/rasff_annual_report.2015.pdf ">http://ec.europe.eu/food/safety/docs/rasff_annual_report.2015.pdf (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)