Sustained UK lobbying has seen “long and torturous” negotiations over nitrate levels for leafy vegetables end in success, potentially rescuing salad businesses from failure.
The Commission and Member States reached an agreement on the maximum permitted levels for lettuce, spinach and rocket, based on EFSA advice.
The European Commission has long been considering nitrate levels in leafy vegetables in developing a long-term strategy to manage potential food safety risks from dietary intake.
Part of the strategy included revising maximum nitrate levels across a range of leafy vegetables including spinach, lettuce and rocket.
The main concern was that these leafy vegetables have been shown to contain high levels of nitrates, increased when grown under cover and/or lower light conditions of northern European production systems.
The original proposals put forward by the commission, would have been “unworkable for British producers and not reflective our production conditions”, according to the NFU who put forward nitrate limits now agreed upon.
A spokesperson for the union said: “Initial proposals for spinach and rocket may have led to producers having to cease production on those product lines, as production would simply not be viable.
“We became aware very early on that the EU risk assessments, on which the levels were based, were on gross overestimations on both occurrence and frequency of nitrate intake. A large flaw was the inability to differentiate between the consumption of spinach purchased from preserved or frozen, from that cooked fresh at home.”
Stockbridge Technology Centre CEO Graham Ward who has been involved in the process told FPJ: “We have had a long and torturous process to get to this point. Studies have shown that nitrate is actually very beneficial to health and negative assessments of it date back to incidents pre-war. This is a reasonable, workable settlement.”
The new proposals for revised maximum limits for rocket (Eruca sativa, Diplotaxis sp., Brassica tenuifolia, Sisymbrium tenuifolium) include 7000 mg NO3/kg for product harvested between 1 October to 31 March, and 6000 NO3/kg for product harvested between 1 April and 30 September.
This represents a 1000mg increase on the original proposals. These proposals will now be passed to the EU Parliament and Council for scrutiny, but we are expecting them to be rubber stamped before coming into effect later this year.
The decision still has to be ratified and instilled in protocol.
No comments yet