The Netherlands, as a country with an important agricultural production and one of the largest trading flows in the world, has a long tradition in monitoring pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables and other agricultural products. In the last three decades, the design of the Dutch monitoring program has changed considerably, due to major changes in trade flows, sampling locations, consolidation of laboratories, but also changing MRL legislation (Regulation (EC) No. 396/2005) and evolution in coordinated EU monitoring programs. The total number of samples analyzed by the Netherlands Food and Consumer Products Safety Authority (NVWA) laboratory has decreased from approximately20.000 in the nineties to 5500 nowadays, However, in the meantime, this decrease has been more than compensated by the mandatory self-control systems of producers, traders and retailers, which have resulted in the analysis of more than 100.000 samples for pesticide residues. Through the years the emphasis as to origin of the sampled products has shifted drastically from domestically grown products towards products from EU-countries and third countries. The introduction of the EU Regulation (EC) No. 669/2009, as regards the increased level of official controls on imports of certain feed and food of non-animal origin, has considerably changed the organization and internal logistics of our NVWA laboratory. In this presentation, all these changes and their effects on the results of the Dutch monitoring and enforcement program will be discussed and the monitoring results and trends in violation rates will be shown.

Pesticide residue monitoring and import control in The Netherlands

248th National Meeting (2014)

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