The European Commission released the latest report on the use of the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed which shows that a total of 3832 notifications of food or feed risks were reported to the European Commission in 2017.
942 of these were classified as “alert”, indicating a serious health risk for which rapid action was required. The type of risks mostly concerned salmonella in poultry meat as the most frequently reported issue in food checked at the EU border and mercury in swordfish in food checked on the UE market.
The report also shows that there was only a small percentage of the notifications in 2017 related to feed (6%) and food contact materials (3.1%).
In addition, in April 2017, there was a high number of notifications related to fipronil residues in eggs due to the illegal use of this substance as a biocide.