EFSA Proposes Relaxing Residue Limits for Fluopyram in Honey, Health Risk Assessment Sparks Controversy

On October 15, 2024, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) officially published an announcement on the proposed revision of the maximum residue limits (MRL) of flonicamid in honey.

The application for amendment is in accordance with the relevant provisions of Chapter VI of Regulation (EC) No 396/2005 and is submitted by ISK Biosciences Europe N.V. Company submission. After a thorough and meticulous evaluation, EFSA concluded that the residual levels of fluridamide in honey at 0.05 mg/kg are unlikely to pose a significant risk to the health of consumers, whether ingested in the short or long term.

Some excerpts from the original report are as follows:

In accordance with Article 6 of Regulation (EC) No 396/2005, the applicant ISK Biosciences Europe N.V. submitted a request to the competent national authority in Finland to modify the existing maximum residue level (MRL) for the active substance flonicamid in honey. The data submitted in support of the request were not found appropriate to derive an MRL proposal for honey. The assessment was complemented by an analysis of the monitoring data available from the EU monitoring programmes (conducted during 2009–2023). The results from the monitoring data analysis suggest that the current MRL is still sufficient to account for the residue uptake in honey resulting from plant protection products uses of flonicamid on melliferious crops. Adequate analytical methods for enforcement are available to control the residues of flonicamid in honey according to the residue definition as the sum of flonicamid, TFNA and TFNG, expressed as flonicamid at the validated limit of quantification (LOQ) of 0.01 mg/kg for each compound. based on the risk assessment results, EFSA concluded that the short-term and long-term intake of residues in honey at a level of 0.05 mg/kg according to the monitoring data is unlikely to present a risk to consumer health.