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Exposure of the French population to veterinary drug residues in food Volume 19, issue 6, November-December 2020

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Authors
1 Anses
Unité évaluation des risques liés aux aliments / Unité méthodologie et études
14, rue Pierre et Marie Curie
94700 Maisons-Alfort
France
Actuellement en poste à :
Oniris, INRAE
Lab étud residus & contaminants aliments LABERCA,
F-44307 Nantes
France
2 Anses
Unité évaluation des risques liés aux aliments
14, rue Pierre et Marie Curie
94700 Maisons-Alfort
France
3 Anses
Direction de l’évaluation des risques
14, rue Pierre et Marie Curie
94700 Maisons-Alfort
France
4 Anses
Laboratoire de Fougères
10B, rue Claude Bourgelat
35133 Javené
5 Anses
Unité méthodologie et études
14, rue Pierre et Marie Curie
94700 Maisons-Alfort
France
* Tirés à part

In France, more than 300 active substances are authorized in veterinary medicine. While the a priori risk has been assessed and the regulatory framework well established, knowledge of actual exposure is poorly documented. The purpose of this study is to estimate the exposure of the French population to veterinary drug residues and to compare it to the recommended acceptable daily intakes (ADI) for these substances, to determine if there is a risk for the population.

The dietary exposure of 2624 adults and 1455 children to 215 veterinary medicine residues was estimated by combining consumption data from the 2nd National Individual Study of Food Consumption (INCA 2), first with maximum residue limits (MRL) for foodstuffs, and second with the data from the 2017 report on the monitoring of veterinary medicinal product residues, managed by the French general directorate for food. Since almost 90% of these data are censored, minimal and maximal scenarios were considered.

Of the 102 substances that have an MRL and an ADI, 87 were tested in monitoring programs. After refining the MRL results with those from the monitoring program, exposure to two antiparasitic treatments, triclabendazole and albendazole, significantly exceeded the ADI for children, under the high assumption, by 42 and 17%, respectively. Suspected exceedances of ADI were found for 17 molecules, whose exposures were not refined by monitoring programs because they were not specifically analyzed in matrices strongly contributing to food exposure.

In conclusion, population exposure for the substances studied was lower overall than their ADI, particularly for adults. Nevertheless, suspected exceedances of ADI were identified for children. For the substances in question, a Total Diet Study (TDS)-like study, that is, a study carried out in prepared foods, would provide more conclusive results.