FEFAC, the voice of European feed manufacturers, said the number of RASFF notifications in 2013 relating to dioxin contaminants in feed materials “remained significant” - there were 16 of these types of notices in 2013 as opposed to 24 the previous year.
However, the fact that "the intensity of monitoring is much higher than in the past and that the number of notifications remains roughly the same is rather encouraging as to the efficacy of the risk management systems in place to prevent contaminated stuffs getting into the market,” said Arnaud Bouxin, deputy secretary general at FEFAC.
There is a 100% mandatory monitoring system in place for at-risk feed chain products such as blended fats, he added.
There were also several alerts related to banned substances such as chloramphenicol in feed, noted an EU Commission review of the data generated by its Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) in 2013.
The alerts over chloramphenicol were related to one company in India.
Rapid alert system
The RASFF reports relate to risks identified in food and feed materials that are placed on the market in the notifying country or detained at an EU border entry with an EU neighboring country.
The system was put in place to provide authorities with an effective tool to act more rapidly and in a coordinated manner in response to a health threat caused by food or feed.
The notifications are categorized as ‘alert’, ‘information’ or ‘border rejection’ depending on the seriousness of the risks identified and the distribution of the product on the market.
Aflatoxin detection
The review of the 2013 RASFF notifications also shows a high incidence of aflatoxin contamination of maize as well as frequent detection of ruminant DNA in products of animal origin and fish feeds.
“This reflects the higher than usual prevalence of aflatoxin in the EU maize harvest of 2012 and the implementation of a new, extremely sensitive, method of controls for the presence of prohibited ruminant proteins,” said FEFAC.
Overall, though, the number of RASFF notifications for feed last year decreased by 16% compared to the levels in 2012.
Notices related to livestock feedstuffs made up 79% of the 272 feed related warnings sent to the RASFF in 2013 - the other 21% concerned feed materials for the pet food sector.
Only 12.5% of these notifications triggered alerts, whereas 60.5% gave rise to information and 27% to border rejections.
The number of cases of microbiological contamination of feed in 2013 was on par with the figure for 2012.
GM alerts
There was only one RASFF notification related to feedstuffs contaminated with traces of non-EU authorized GM materials - the notice involved rice proteins from Pakistan.
The feed notifications represent slightly less than 10% of all the warnings sent to the RASFF last year.