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| Science News - December 21, 2001 |
EU limits dioxins in food and animal feed
The European Union (EU) has set legally binding limits on dioxins in food and animal feed for the first time. The new limits take effect beginning July 1, 2002.
The limits—maximum thresholds for allowable dioxin levels—apply to all food and feed sold in the EU. Food produced and sold within individual member states must not exceed the thresholds, and they must sample and monitor all produce to assure that it complies with the requirements.
The thresholds are the first part of a three-prong strategy targeting dioxins. Early next year, the European Commission is expected to define stricter action levels. Once approved by the EU Parliament and EU Council, they will require any member state finding food or feed containing dioxins above the specified levels to investigate contamination sources and take measures to eliminate them. Later next year, the EC will propose even tighter target levels to be achieved over the next five to six years.
EC’s overall plan is to reduce human daily intake of dioxins to <2 picograms per kilogram of body weight, a value established by EC’s Scientific Committee on Food. According to the U.K. government’s Food Standards Agency, about one-third of EU’s population may currently be consuming more than this level, although there is no appreciable health risk in most instances because the intake level includes safety factors. The main sources of dioxins in the human diet are meat and meat products, and milk and dairy products, with highest concentrations found in fatty foods, such as liver and oily fish.
Both diets and dioxin intake vary widely across Europe. People living near the Baltic Sea, for example, consume a lot of contaminated fish, and their risk of exceeding the recommended dioxin daily intake limit is much higher than for people living in southern Europe. Until 2006, the new laws allow Finland and Sweden, within their own territory, to continue marketing for local consumption Baltic fish whose dioxin content exceeds the specified limits.
Another EU directive, presently in discussion but also due to become law on July 1, 2002, establishes criteria for dioxin sampling and monitoring methodologies. National authorities, working with the EC, will be responsible for undertaking the analyses and developing cheaper, quicker techniques if they are needed.
Companies will have to pay accredited labs to test ingredients and products before they can be sold in the marketplace. Although most national authorities and food industry associations have been preparing for the introduction of these levels for some time, Dominic Taeymans, of the European Federation of Food Industry Associations (CIAA), says it is too early to estimate the additional expense that industry will incur when the new requirements take effect. He says, however, that costs notwithstanding, there is a need for more data collection to determine the current dioxins levels in all foods and feedstuffs. —MARIA BURKE |
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