Abstract
The food quality and the safety must be a constant concern both for consumers and for authorities. The education for quality and the active involvement, coherent and sustained by the state, through the implementation of a quality strategy at national level should be the main `forces` that can contribute to the implementation and certification of quality management systems in the agri-food sector. The meat and milk products are important components in the human diet; therefore, their contamination with heavy metals plays a significant role in the public health. The concentrations of several human essential trace elements (Mn, Cu, Zn and Ba) and toxic elements (As, Cd, Pb) were analysed in 95 animal-based foods, including meat, milk products and honey, collected from Romanian market. The inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry technique (ICP-MS) was used for the determinations. In order to evaluate the potential health risk of the consumers due to metals intake via food ingestion, three indices were calculated, namely: the potential average daily dose (ADDpot, mg/kg/day), the hazard quotient (HQ) and the hazard index (HI). In terms of food safety, the toxic element concentrations in the majority of the investigated samples were below the maximum permitted levels set by Romanian and European legislation.
Highlights
The food quality and the safety must be a constant concern both for consumers and for authorities
The qualitative requirements imposed for these products are due to the prospects of numerical growth of the consumers and, on the other hand, to the numerous and costly agrifood crises they have faced and which have jeopardised the confidence in the quality and safety of food products from EU
The mineral and heavy metal contents in animal product food have been determined by many researchers, using different methods, such as atomic absorption spectrophotometry [9], flame atomic absorption spectrometry (F-AAS) [10, 11], inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES), inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) [12,13,14], inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) [15]
Summary
The food quality and the safety must be a constant concern both for consumers and for authorities. The main objectives of the present study were i) the content analysis of several human essential trace elements (Mn, Cu, Zn, Ba) and toxic elements (As, Cd, Pb) in 95 animal-based food samples, including meat, milk, cheese and honey, produced in Romania and collected from the markets; ii) the evaluation of possible human health risk associated with the ingestion of these food products and iii) the comparison between Romanian and European legislations and the ethical issues identification.
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