Serious notifications on residues of veterinary medicinal products in food from RASFF (2012–2020)

Abstract

Serious alert (sA) and serious border rejection (sBR) notifications on RVMP from the RASFF Portal (https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/rasff-window/portal/?event=SearchForm&cleanSearch=1#) were utilised to generate “lag phases” (time intervals from sampling day to notification day), presented as a relative percent (%) share, in order to highlight the timely reporting of serious hazards, on RVMP in food. The 51-≥101 days lag phase, as an global value (of all RASFF Member States observed together), in sA and sBR notifications was 17.98% and 4.23%, respectively, whereas the 0–30 days lag phase, in sA and sBR notifications was 35.95% and 79.66%, respectively. A lack of harmonization was observed between the top-4 EU RASFF MS (having contributed the most sA and sBR notifications). In sA notifications on RVMP, the combinations of the highest prevalence of specific hazards in the most frequently notified food product categories were: i) meat and meat products (other than poultry) + (oxy)phenylbutazone, and ii) fish and fish products + (leuco)malachite green, whereas in the sBR were i) crustaceans and products thereof + nitrofuran (metabolite) and ii) fish and fish products + nitrofuran (metabolite). A more rapid notification of sA is hereby proposed to effectively attain harmonisation with the revealed timely notification of sBR on RVMP in food by the EU RASFF MS. This could be realized with focused audits on the part of the European Commission's Health and Food Audits and Analysis, aiming at the enhanced protection of Public Health.