Alert notices from RASFF concerning food (except for fruit & vegetabl

: Published: 08 July 2022

In this section we repeated alert notices from the RASFF system of the European commission issued in the previous month, which we thought to be noteworthy and of interest to our clients.

We will refrain from repeating the numerous reports on all mycotoxin and salmonella limit violations, but show only a selection to pinpoint the risks. However, we like to put your attention to the fact that in numerous cases missing allergen information was categorized as serious and caused border rejections too.

You can analyze the RASFF-site conveniently by yourself using several filter options and limit the notification to those which are of direct interest to your business.

Chemical Hazards:	Product	Origin
3-MCPD & glycidyl esters	Glycidyl esters (1,32 mg/kg MRL: 1 mg/kg ) in sunflower oil	Unknown (notified by the Netherlands)
	Glycidyl esters (4,606 mg/kg MRL: 1 mg/kg) in sesame oil	India
	Glycidyl esters in vegetable Ghee	UAE
Ethylene oxide / 2-chlorethanol:	2-Chlorethanol (21,3 mg/kg ! ; MRL: 0,01mg/kg) in fat belly	USA (notified by the Netherlands)
	EtO (13,5 mg/kg) in Cayenne pepper used in turkey chorizo	China
	EtO (0,854 mg/kg; MRL 0,1 mg/kg) in turmeric	India
	EtO (1,7 mg/kg; MRL 0,1 mg/kg) in food supplement	UK
Heavy and toxic metals	Mercury (1,4 mg/kg) in chilled yellowfin tuna	France
Heavy and toxic metals	Cadmium (2,8 mg/kg MRL 1 mg/kg) in whole mussels	Chile (notified by France)
Histamine	in canned tuna i(>500 mg/kg) sunflower oil	China
Mycotoxins	Aflatoxins (14 µg/kg total) in brown Basmati rice	Pakistan
	Ochratoxin A (7,3 µg/kg ; MRL 3 µg/kg) in Flour	Czech Republic
	Aflatoxins (12,2 µg/kg total) in nutmeg	Indonesia
PAH	Benzo(a)pyrene (2,9 µg/kg; MRL: 2 µg/kg) in sunflower oil	Ukraine
	Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons 78,8 µg/kg; MRL 50 µg/kg) in white pepper	Vietnam
	Benzo(a)pyrene (24,4 & 35,6 µg/kg; MRL: 10 µg/kg) in turmeric	India
Pesticides	Thiametoxam (0,052 & 0,078 mg/kg MRL: 0,01 mg/kg and non-authorised substance Tricyclazol (0,052 mg/kg & 0,17 mg/kg ! MRL: 0,01 mg/kg) in rice	India
	Anthraquinone (0,042 mg/kg ; MRL 0,02 mg/kg) in green tea	China
	Chlorpyrifos (0,023 mg/kg; MRL 0,01 mg/kg) in red chilli peppers	Vietnam
	Carbofuran (0,033 mg/kg ; MRL 0,01 mg/kg) in organic buckwheat kernels	China
Pyrrolizidine alkaloids	in cumin (154000 µg/kg !; 2780 µg/kg; 14100 µg/kg !; MRL 400 µg/kg)	India
Pyrrolizidine alkaloids	in cumin (12350 µg/kg ! retested 10560 µg/kg !; MRL 400 µg/kg)	Turkey
Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)	in food supplement (2305 mg/kg)	Unknown notified by Czech Republic

Microbiological Hazards	Product	Origin
Bacillus cereus	in Tofu medaillons with spinach (270.000 CFU/g)	Italy
Listeria monocytogenes	in cream cheese	Spain
	In vegan falafel	Netherlands
	in vegetal cheese-like speciality	France
Norovirus*	in oysters (4)	France & Netherlands

Other Hazards	Origin
Excessive curcumin content (473 mg) in food supplement	Germany

YOUR PLUS: *Our laboratory AGROLAB Blasy-Busse is allowed to work with pathogenic food viruses and offers also analysis for Norovirus.

Link: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/rasff-window/

Author: Dr. Frank Mörsberger

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