Commission Regulation (EC) No 1881/2006 established maximum levels for certain contaminants in food, and has been amended many times; in order to improve the readability of the rules and to increase the definitions, the European Commission has decided to repeal it and substitute with a new Regulation.
Maximum levels as currently set out by Regulation (EC) No 1881/2006, as amended, should be maintained by this new Regulation
The main changes in this new Regulation are outlined below:
- The definitions of "food", "food business operator", "placing on the market", "final consumer", "processing", "unprocessed products" and "processed products" are established (Art. 1).
- A general prohibition of detoxification applies to all food containing contaminants. Therefore, food containing contaminants listed in Annex I shall not be deliberately detoxified by chemical treatments. In Regulation (EC) No 1881/2006 this ban only applied to foodstuffs containing contaminants listed in section 2 of the Annex (mycotoxins) (Art. 4).
- Transitional measures are laid down for the placing on the market of certain foods as regards maximum limits for some contaminants (Art. 10).
- As regards the contaminant melamine, following the publication by the Codex Alimentarius of a maximum limit in liquid infant formulae, this limit has been incorporated in the new European standard.
This regulation shall enter into force the 25 th May 2023.
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