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AgVetLink: Number 53, December 2005

The 2005/06 Food Residues Surveillance Programme

NZFSA is preparing to start the 2005/06 Food Residues Surveillance Programme (FRSP).

As in previous years, a range of food/chemical combinations have been rated against criteria of toxicity of the chemicals, expected residues in food, food consumption, what NZFSA knows about ‘real-life’ residue findings (both domestically and overseas), known data gaps, stakeholder interest, availability of cost-effective analyses, and integrity in the food supply chain. Previous years’ results can be found on the NZFSA website, under Science > Research projects and reports.

Over time, NZFSA plans to re-visit food/chemical combinations of interest (to cover seasonal variations and changing practices etc.) but in these early days, NZFSA is still trying to get the maximum coverage possible. Consequently, this year the focus will be on ‘new’ foods, using multi-residue screens.

Two types of multi-residue analyses will be used this year:

• the gas chromatographic multi-residue (GCMR) screen used in previous years, and

• a screen for dithiocarbamate fungicides (DTCs).

The DTC screen is limited in that it cannot distinguish between the different DTCs but, because MRLs are set on carbon disulfide (a breakdown product of all DTCs), this limitation was considered less important.

The foods and analyses that NZFSA is considering for this year are raspberries (GCMR, DTCs), apricots and plums (GCMR, DTCs), cucumbers (GCMR), wheat (GCMR), carrots (GCMR), and onions (GCMR, DTCs).

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