EU pesticide residue breaches rise in peppers, grapes and olive oil, EFSA says
EFSA says pesticide-limit breaches are becoming more frequent in some widely consumed foods even though about 99 percent of samples still comply overall.
The European Food Safety Authority has flagged a worsening trend in a small but important set of food categories, even though the broad compliance picture across the EU remains relatively strong. Politico reports that about 99 percent of tested samples still met legal limits overall, but exceedances have become more common in sweet peppers, table grapes and virgin olive oil. EFSA nevertheless says the overall health risk to consumers remains low.
Sweet peppers stand out most sharply in the latest findings. According to the report, the share of pepper samples exceeding EU pesticide limits has nearly doubled since 2018. Table grapes and virgin olive oil are moving in the same direction. Chicken eggs, which had been clean three years earlier, are now also showing breaches. That gives the issue wider significance for fruit, vegetable and food-chain operators because it touches products that are both common and commercially important.
Imports remain a sensitive part of the picture. Of 39,433 samples classed as high-risk at the EU border in 2024, the latest year covered by the data, 3.6 percent were rejected outright and never reached the market. Politico says cumin from India, pomegranates and tomatoes from Turkey, and green tea from China and Vietnam were among the leading failures. Rejection rates for imported food were notably higher than for food produced inside the European Union.
Those numbers feed directly into a long-running political dispute over competitive conditions for EU farmers. Producers have argued for years that imports can enter from jurisdictions with looser standards. The European Commission last year pledged tighter border checks as part of its new agriculture and food strategy, and a dedicated task force on import controls was launched in January. That gives the latest EFSA data both regulatory and trade implications.
For EU-grown produce, much of the problem was linked to ethephon, flonicamid and glufosinate. Politico says ethephon, a ripening agent, kept appearing in sweet peppers and bananas even though it is not approved for either crop, while flonicamid and glufosinate are approved substances that were nevertheless found above legal limits. The result is likely to mean tighter scrutiny of pesticide-use practices, import flows and quality control across the supply chain, even without a broader consumer-safety alarm at this stage.