Scientific Opinion on the evaluation of substances as acceptable previous cargoes for edible fats and oils

Shipping of edible fats and oils into Europe is permitted in bulk tanks, in which substances included in a positivelist were transported. The European Commission requested EFSA to evaluate a list of substances as acceptableprevious cargoes. The Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain (CONTAM Panel) based this evaluation on itsrecent review of the SCF criteria for acceptable previous cargoes and criteria proposed by the Codex Committeefor Fats and Oils (CCFO). The CONTAM Panel considered that calcium nitrate, ammonium nitrate, the doublesalt and solutions of these as well as hydrogen peroxide, isobutanol, kaolin slurry and fructose would not be ofhealth concern as previous cargoes. The Panel considered that unfractionated fatty acid/alcohol mixtures ormixtures of fatty acids/alcohols would not cause any health concern as previous cargoes, provided their sourcesare edible types of oils and fats. Likewise, only fatty ester mixtures produced from fatty acids and fatty alcoholsderived from edible types of fats and oils, as well as methanol and ethanol, would not cause any health concernas previous cargoes, provided the sources of fatty esters mixtures are restricted to non-contaminated sourcesexcluding such as oils from waste collection sites. Because of toxicological concern and/or lack of data, theCONTAM Panel considered that cyclohexanol, cyclohexanone and 2,3-butanediol did not meet the criteria foracceptability as previous cargoes. In the case of epoxidised vegetable oils, the Panel had no information aboutwhat entities might be covered by the term “epoxidised vegetable oil”. Epoxidised soybean oil (ESBO) isalready on the list of acceptable previous cargoes. Because there are no toxicological data on other epoxidisedvegetable oils, the Panel could not evaluate these epoxidised vegetable oils as previous cargoes.