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
2 March 2026
Data collection framework opens for testing data transmission
1 April 2026
Data collection framework opens for the official data transmission
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)
31 August 2026
Deadline for data validation and data acceptance in the EFSA sDWH
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 is updated annually and the publication is planned every February.
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.
Links to the annual reports for VMPR and Pesticide residues
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 | 2023
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 | 2024
Veterinary Medicinal Product Residues data visualisations: 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024