Data collection: chemical monitoring

Since 2019, the collection of chemical contaminant Any substance occurring in foodstuffs that was not added intentionally. Contaminants can arise from packaging, food processing and transportation, farming practices or the use of animal medicines. The term does not include contamination from insects or rodents, food additive A substance deliberately added to foods or beverages for beneficial technological reasons (e.g. to preserve, flavour, colour or ensure a particular texture). Food additives are not normally consumed by themselves nor used as typical ingredients in food, pesticide Substance used to kill or control pests, including disease-carrying organisms and undesirable insects, animals and plants residue and veterinary medicinal product residue data has been harmonised and falls under the umbrella of chemical monitoring data collection.

Deadlines for 2026 Chemicals data reporting and validation

  1. 2 March 2026

    Data collection framework opens for testing data transmission

  2. 1 April 2026

    Data collection framework opens for the official data transmission

  3. 30 June 2026

    Deadline for the complete transmission of all residue data domains datasets/data (VMPR, pesticide residues, chemical contaminants, food flavourings, and food additives)

    All data to be transmitted to the EFSA DCF by 30 June 2026: data providers for all data domains in the frame of the harmonised ChemMon data collection will have until 31 August 2026 to validate (check) and accept their data in the EFSA Scientific DataWareHouse (sDWH)

  4. 31 August 2026

    Deadline for data validation and data acceptance in the EFSA sDWH

  5. 1 September 2026

    Closure of the data collection

    No more data correction, validation and acceptance will be possible

Chemical monitoring reporting guides and documents

The Chemical monitoring reporting Guidance will be updated before the opening of data collection, expected end of February 2026.

Data reporting tools

MS Excel based tools used for reporting chemical monitoring data (the updated tools are published annually, before the opening of data collection, around end of March).

Legal limits database - used for compliance checking chemical monitoring data

Catalogues in MS Excel format

The EFSA catalogues for data reporting are available in Excel format for ease of use and reference. The catalogues are published on the EFSA Knowledge Junction on Zenodo, an open access research data repository.

Major releases of DCF Catalogues are planned every year in January.

European Union reports on pesticide residues in food: 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023

Pesticide residues data visualisations: 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022

European Union annual reports on Veterinary Medicinal Product Residues: 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023

Veterinary Medicinal Product Residues data visualisations: 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023