Teagasc brings simple access to food residue database
government-funded project comes to fruition.
Teagasc, the Irish agricultural and food development authority, is behind the development of the easy access for the National Food Residue Database (NFRD), funded by the Department of agriculture and food, and the Food Institutional Research Measure (FIRM).
Chemical residues in food, along with microbial pathogens, represent one of the principle determents for the acceptability of food products to the consumer, says Dr. Michael O'Keeffe at Teagasc.
He, and his team claim the development of easy access to the NFRD will "provide a readily available single source for this information to potential users."
The NFRD data includes veterinary drugs, prohibited substances, pesticides and heavy metals, taken from monitoring and surveillance programmes and from studies and surveys on chemical residues and contaminants in food.
In addition, the database provides details on regulations, specifications and norms relating to residues in food, said O'Keeffe.
Production of a database on the residue status of Irish foods aims to provide data to be used by the Irish food industry to assist production, processing and marketing of food products.
Teagasc claims the database may be used as a marketing tool to promote Irish food from a food safety point of view, to demonstrate compliance of Irish products with regulations and with customer specifications, and to identify potential or actual problems with production and processing practices.
