Safety Notifications on Thai Food Export to the European Union in 2010-2019

Abstract

Background: Food Export to the European Union (EU) is a major source income for Thailand. However, some of these products were not through import to the EU countries due to food safety hazards detection that caused a negative impact on economy and reputation of Thailand.

Objective: To study the statistics of Thai food safety notifications and analyze the causes of Thai food product notifications in the EU from 2010 to 2019.

Methods: The data for this study was collected the Thai food product notification data by using the EU’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) database.  Then, it classified the food categories, food safety hazards, and notifying countries as descriptive statistics.

Results: It is found that the Thai food product notifications of the EU caused from chemical, biological and physical hazards, absence of certificates, and transportation quality issues.  A major food that noticed includes: (1) fruit and vegetable contaminated pesticides; sulfite; and genetic modification, (2) poultry contaminated Salmonella, (3) seafood contaminated histamine and cadmium, and (4) feed that contaminated mercury; arsenic; and Salmonella.  Moreover, a case of frozen food, most of them were controlled unsuitable temperature during transport which the products were declined whether destroyed at ports. The EU’ Countries where very strict on food import inspection were Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Germany.

Conclusions: Although the number of Thai food notifications in the EU tended to decline, it still had food safety hazards continually: pesticides, Salmonella, and heavy metals.