(RASFF) Annual Report 2009 - European Commission - Europa

Annual Report 2009
documents. The electronic certification system TRACES can be of great help
in this co-operation with the exporting countries in fighting this kind of fraud.
The Commission provides access to TRACES to exporting countries and trains
them as part of its “Better Training for Safer Food programme”.
Feed
The chart below shows that feed is getting more reported every year since
2004. This should not mean that problems with feed are on the rise. It is more
likely that reporting procedures for feed have matured over the years. More
EVOLUTION OF NOTIFICATIONS CONCERNING FEED
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100
0
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
countries are reporting regularly on risks in relation to feed than before but
when looking at individual countries, no clear trends can be observed.
Spain and the United Kingdom have reported considerably more on feed than
the years before. Most of the Spanish and British notifications were about
rejections at the border. Spain reported Salmonella or Enterobacteriaceae,
but also some notifications for unauthorised genetically modified maize
MON88017 found in consignments of soybean feed material. This raised high
concern in Europe because of the dependence of the animal production in the
EU on imports of soybean. There was great fear that rising feed prices would
seriously impact the meat production cost. After a favourable opinion by EFSA,
the authorisation procedure of this GM maize was accelerated and negative
consequences for the animal production in the EU were avoided. The United
Kingdom reported 13 border rejections of groundnuts for bird feed, mostly
from Brazil and from India.
In the category “feed additives” there were again some notifications reporting
unacceptable levels of heavy metals arsenic, lead and cadmium and two
notifications for presence of dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs in bentonite clay and
in sulphur. The sulphur that was produced in Poland turned out not to have
been sold for feed purpose.
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