Food Safety Focus (135th Issue, October 2017) – Food Incident Highlight

Follow-up on Fipronil Contaminated Eggs

In response to the incident of pesticide fipronil detected in eggs in August, the Centre for Food Safety (CFS) has stepped up holding and testing of poultry eggs from European Union (EU) countries at import level and enhanced surveillance on eggs.

In view of the fact that the EU Ministerial Conference on the follow-up of the fipronil incident was held on 26 September and a co-ordinated EU-wide monitoring plan on the presence of illegally used substances in eggs and poultry meat had been implemented, as well as there was no new development of the incident, the CFS has decided to narrow the scope of the arrangement for holding poultry eggs from all EU countries for testing at import level to cover five EU countries only, namely, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France and Italy.

Since the incident, other than the eight unsatisfactory samples which were announced earlier, the CFS has collected 184 samples of poultry eggs and egg products from EU member states for fipronil testing and all test results were satisfactory.