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Food consumed in the European Union (EU) continues to be either largely free of pesticide residues or to contain only residues the fall within legal limits, new figures show. The latest monitoring report published by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) finds that more than 97 percent of food samples collected across the EU in 2015 were within legal limits and that just over 53 percent were free of quantifiable residues. The figures are in line with those recorded in 2014. Among the key findings are:

Use theinteractive report to go beyond the headline figures and find out more about the findings from 2015.

As part of the annual report, EFSAs review of the results of the EU-coordinated control program (EUCP), under which reporting countries examine samples from the same basket of food items. For 2015 the products were aubergines, bananas, broccoli, virgin olive oil, orange juice, peas, sweet peppers, table grapes, wheat, butter and eggs.

The highest exceedancerate recorded was for broccoli (3.4 percent of samples), followed by table grapes (1.7 percent). Rare exceedances were found for olive oil, orange juice and chicken eggs. No exceedances were recorded for butter.

EFSA also performed a dietary risk assessment based on the EUCP. For both short-term (acute) and long-term (chronic) exposure the Authority concluded that the risk to consumers was low.

The same products were also examined in 2012, since when the overall exceedance rate has fallen slightly from 0.9 percent to 0.8 percent in 2015.

In its report EFSA makes a number of recommendations for increasing the efficiency of the EU-coordinated and national control programmes.

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European Union food again found largely free of pesticides | Food ... - Food Safety News