Canadian Monitoring of Baby Foods Finds 100 Percent Compliance with Chemical Contaminant Limits
The general food supply was also more than 95 percent compliant.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has published the most recent findings from its monitoring programs for chemical contaminants in children’s foods and in the general food supply. The overwhelming majority of samples across the sampling and testing assignments were found to be satisfactory.
The latest reports follow the recently released results from CFIA's National Microbiological Monitoring Program (NMMP) for 2024–2025, which found an overall 98.9 percent satisfactory rate.
Children’s Food Project (CFP)
A total of 105 samples of infant and young children’s pureed foods were purchased in February 2024 and analyzed for pesticide residues and toxic heavy metals (i.e., arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury).
All samples were compliant with Canadian regulations for pesticide residues, 69 percent of samples did not contain detectable pesticide residues, and 80 percent did not contain detectable levels of toxic heavy metals. Canada does not currently have regulatory limits for toxic heavy metals in food.
Access the full report here.
National Chemical Residue Monitoring Program (NCRMP)
In 2022–2023, more than 110,000 tests for residues of veterinary drugs, pesticides, environmental contaminants, mycotoxins, and metals were performed on approximately 15,500 monitoring samples of domestic and imported dairy, eggs, honey, meat and poultry, fish and seafood, fresh and processed fruit and vegetable commodities, and maple syrup. The overall compliance rate with Canadian standards for chemical residues was 97.5 percent, which is comparable to 2021–2022. Domestic and imported foods had compliance rates of 98.2 percent and 96.9 percent, respectively.
All food commodity groups had overall compliance rates exceeding the program target of 95 percent in the 2022–2023 fiscal year. However, three commodity groups had either domestic or import compliance rates below 95 percent:
- Imported dairy products: A compliance rate of 91 percent, with most positive and non-compliant results from veterinary drug residues found in cheeses; specifically, thiouracil, a thyrostat drug used in the past to increase weight gain in animals prior to slaughter, which is no longer allowed for use in Canada
- Domestic honey: A compliance rate of 93.9 percent, down 5 percent from the previous year mostly due to violations found from new testing for polar pesticides, including glyphosate, which began in honey in 2022–2023
- Imported fish and seafood: A compliance rate of 94.5 percent, mainly due to veterinary drug residues, and mostly detected in aquaculture finfish, followed by shrimp and wild-caught finfish.
Fish and seafood products were added to the scope of NCRMP surveillance activities for the first time in 2022–2023.
Access the full report here.
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