News Release

Updated assessment of the health risks posed by longer-term consumption of foods contaminated with fipronil

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BfR Federal Institute for Risk Assessment

An average daily intake level was determined for this updated estimation. As the estimation of the risk to consumers was made on the basis of the available data with a number of very conservative assumptions, the expected actual exposure of consumers should lie well below the exposures estimated here.

Based on German and European consumption data (NVS II Model and EFSA PRIMo (Ver.2)), n the ADI value (0.0002 mg/kg body weight per day) is not exceeded for any of the observed consumer groups through the consumption of chicken eggs and chicken meat containing fipronil, including processed foods made from them. With regard to the current fipronil findings, utilisation rates of the ADI of 39% and 12% were estimated for children and adults, respectively, from the consumption data for the German population. ADI utilisation rates of up to 40% were established for the various European consumer groups.

ADI stands for Acceptable Daily Intake and indicates the quantity of a substance which consumers can ingest every day of their lives without any recognisable health risk.

As the updated estimation of the risk to consumers posed by the consumption of chicken eggs and chicken meat containing fipronil, including processed foods made from them, showed no exceedance of the acceptable daily intake levels over an entire lifetime, a health hazard is unlikely.

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