Abstract
Global sourcing of food may lead to variability in concentrations of contaminants or pesticide residues. It would be important to incorporate origin influences in dietary exposure assessment. To characterise uncertainties, substance concentrations from GFM (German Food Monitoring), chosen based on the highest CV (coefficient of variation), and food consumption from NVS II (German National Nutrition Survey II) were combined in standard scenarios. Averages or higher percentiles of non-grouped concentrations were used. Additional origin-related scenarios used concentrations grouped by origin. For bromide in tomatoes the most conservative origin-related scenario for Italian tomatoes resulted in the highest exposure of 0.015 mg/d/kg BW. The impact of origin was not covered by the conservative standard scenario (0.006 mg/d/kg BW). For ethephon in pineapples and aluminium in kiwifruits, the highest intake estimates were obtained with the conservative standard scenario resulting in 0.895 μg/d/kg BW and 0.023 mg/week/kg BW, respectively. In these two cases, standard scenarios cover origin influences but the conservative origin-related scenario based on origins with higher concentrations identifies lower exposures of 0.835 μg/d/kg BW for ethephon from African pineapples and 0.014 mg/week/kg BW for aluminium from non-EU kiwifruits. Hence, the inclusion of origin information can refine exposure assessment.
Highlights
Food supply is becoming more global, especially in the sourcing of raw materials and the food ingredients [1]
This paper aims to use available data on substance concentrations grouped by geographical food origin to study the influence of origin on standard deterministic dietary exposure assessment
For samples of tomatoes and kiwifruits, there is no implausible origin information in GFM compared to FAO data, but there are some unspecified data (
Summary
Food supply is becoming more global, especially in the sourcing of raw materials and the food ingredients [1]. To guarantee an all-season availability of agricultural products, cross-country and cross-continental trade is intensified, which increases the complexity in food supply [3]. As an important base for risk assessment [4], the relation between substance concentration and geographical food origin is of interest. For cadmium in chocolate there is a Mandatory origin information on foods allows the identification of the geographical primary production. The limited obligation to label the primary geographical food origin [14, 16, 17] is an obstacle for a refined dietary exposure assessment that should account for food origin
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
