EU Food Supply Remains Largely Compliant with Veterinary Drug Residue Limits
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published its latest annual report on veterinary drug residues in food-producing animals and their products, covering the year 2024.
Specifically, the report looks at the presence of authorized and banned pharmacologically active chemicals (e.g., hormones and steroids, beta-agonists, antibacterials, anti-parasitics, insect repellents, etc.) and their residues in food derived from animals, including meat (farmed and game), dairy products, eggs, and honey. Data for the report were submitted by EU Member States, Iceland, and Norway.
Overall, a high level of compliance with official limits for veterinary drug residues was found, consistent with previous years. Only 0.13 percent of samples were non-compliant (629 of 493,664 samples) in 2024, which is comparable to the 0.11 percent non-compliance rate seen in 2023.
The highest proportion of non-compliant samples was collected under the national randomized surveillance plan (0.22 percent), followed by the national risk-based control plan for third-country imports (0.20 percent) and the national risk-based control plan for production in Member States (0.16 percent).
Of the sampled product groups, the highest proportion of non-compliance was found in casings (0.91 percent), followed by aquaculture products (0.48 percent) and milk (0.42 percent). The number of samples collected for each of these groups was 334 (casings), 7,026 (aquaculture), and 15,841 (milk).
The product groups with the greatest number of samples collected were pigs (274,254), bovines (109,034), and poultry (59,683). These groups had non-compliance rates of 0.05 percent, 0.26 percent, and 0.07 percent, respectively.
An interactive dashboard visualizing the data from the report can be accessed here.
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