Summary Report on 2018 Residue Monitoring of Irish Farmed Finfish & 2018 Border Inspection Post Fishery Product Testing undertaken at the Marine Institute

Abstract

On behalf of the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine (DAFM), the Marine Institute carries out monitoring of chemical residues in finfish for aquaculture sector. This monitoring is set out in the annual National Residue Control Plan, which is approved by the European Commission, and is an important component of the DAFM food safety controls and is implemented under a service contract with the Food Safety Authority of Ireland. Since 1999, the Marine Institute has implemented the National Residues Monitoring Programme for aquaculture. This is carried out on behalf of the Sea Fisheries Protection Authority, which is the responsible organisation for residue controls on farmed finfish. In 2018, in excess of 920 tests and a total of 2,611 measurements were carried out on 171 samples of farmed finfish for a range of residues. Implementation of the Aquaculture 2018 Plan involves taking samples at both farm and processing plant:

• 123 target samples taken at harvest: 110 farmed salmon and 13 freshwater trout. • 48 target samples were taken at other stages of production: 40 salmon smolts and 8 freshwater trout.

All 2018 samples were compliant. For target sampling of farmed fish, a summary table of the residue results from 2005 - 2018 is outlined in Table 1. Overall, the outcome for aquaculture remains one of consistently low occurrence of residues in farmed finfish, with no non-compliant target residues results for the period 2006-2014, 0.11% and 0.10% non-compliant target residues results in 2015 and 2016 respectively and no non-compliant target results in 2017 and 2018.