European Union/Japan: Questions and Answers: Safety of food products imported from Japan.

Section: General News - Following a nuclear accident, what does the EU do as regards food safety? During the years that followed Chernobyl, after scientific advice of the Group of Experts established under the Euratom Treaty (Article 31) the European Community adopted maximum levels in feed and food following a nuclear accident or any other case of radiological emergency. This was done in various Regulations (3954/87 Euratom, 944/89 Euratom and 770/90 Euratom).

The maximum permitted levels of radioactive contamination of foodstuffs adopted at the time, concern the levels of strontium, iodine, alpha emitting isotopes of plutonium and transplutonium, and other nuclides including caesium 134 and 137. The levels in question were confirmed in 1998 following additional analysis by scientific experts and have thus not changed since in the past 24 years.

These maximum levels of contamination concern infant food, dairy produce, general foodstuffs, liquid foodstuffs and minor foodstuffs.

The levels in the Regulation are based on the assumption that, if 10% of the food consumption of a person over a full year would be contaminated at these levels, its annual exposure to ionising radiation would not exceed the additional annual dose limit for a human being, which is 1 mSv (milliSievert). Moreover, …