Mar. 13 – Italy won first place in Europe and in the world for food security, with the least number of chemical residues above the 0.3% limit in food products. The amount found was also five times lower than the European average (1.5% of irregularities) and 26-fold in non-EU (7.9% of irregularities). This is what emerges from a Coldiretti synthesis of an EFSA analysis, the European Food Safety Authority, of over 77,000 samples of 582 different food products, recently published in the Annual Report on pesticide residues.
According to the data, one product of two circulating in Europe is completely free of chemical residues “traces” from pesticides, while 98.4% of the samples tested have residues within the limits. This percentage rises to 99.7% in the case of Italy, and drops to 92.1% for the non-EU countries average. If you analyze individual countries, the worst case is China, with its cabbage found to be contaminated in four cases out of five (83%) and the same is true for broccoli (irregular in 77% of cases) and tomatoes (47% of cases). Grapes (65%) and pepper
(42%) in India, Slovenian peas, Argentine garlic, and Brazilian potatoes also figure on the list of food products exceeding the chemical residue limits. The EFSA analysis used for the very first time the cumulative risk analysis system, which allows to evaluate the combined effects of a cross-exposure to various chemicals with similar toxicological properties.
