How Europe Monitors Pesticide Residues In Food

"How Europe Monitors Pesticide Residues In Food" infographic

Crops that have been treated with pesticides may contain chemical residues. To ensure that pesticides are used correctly and their residues do not pose a risk to consumers, legal limits are set in EU legislation.

How do we know that levels of residues found in food are safe?

84,000 samples collected in 2015.

Food inspection services in the 28 EU Member States, Iceland and Norway have monitoring programmes in place to check that food complies with legal limits.

Analysis

Specialised laboratories test the food samples for the presence of more than 770 pesticides.

Data

Around 20 million individual test results are reported to EFSA and summarised in an annual report.

EU decision-makers

EU decision-makers use EFSA’s conclusions and recommendations to strengthen future monitoring programme.

97% of samples in 2015 were free of residues or contained residues that were within legal limits.

Pestizide