Report for 2010 on the results from the monitoring of veterinary medicinal product residues and other substances in live animals and animal products

The present report summarises the monitoring data from 2010 on the presence of residues of veterinary medicinal products and certain substances in live animals and animal products in the European Union. A total of 736,806 samples were reported to the European Commission. They consisted of 418,081 targeted samples and 30,659 suspect samples reported under Council Directive 96/23/EC, 5,377 samples checked at import and 282,689 samples collected in the framework of programmes developed under the national legislation. The large majority of Member States fulfilled the minimum requirements for sampling frequency laid down in Council Directive 96/23/EC and in Commission Decision 97/747/EC. There were 1,373 or 0.33 % of non-compliant samples out of the total targeted samples in 2010 compared to 0.32 % in 2009. Equally, for most of the substance groups there were no notable variations in the frequency of non-compliant samples in 2010 compared to previous years (2007 to 2009). However, it appears that the frequency of samples non-compliant for steroids, resorcylic acid lactones, anticoccidials, organochlorine compounds and mycotoxins were slightly lower compared to previous years whereas the proportion of non-compliant samples for chemical elements (mainly heavy metals) was higher. Considering that the sampling plan and the spectrum of substances analysed were not necessarily the same over the years, this comparison is associated with a certain degree of uncertainty. As data were collected in aggregated form it was neither possible to calculate the percentage of positive samples for a specific substance nor to ascertain whether these vary significantly between successive years.