Aflatoxins higher than normal. But also high levels of mercury in fish, possibility of salmonella contamination in meat and pesticides beyond the permissible limits. These are some of the anomalies that Coldiretti warns consumers about, especially those who want to save: in some cases, in fact, the lower price of some products can be determined not only by lower quality, but also by a change of material Before .
The blacklist of the most contaminated products, published as every year by Coldiretti based on the calculations of the Rapid Alert System (Rassf) which communicates the risks to human health in food, aims to explain how Made in Italy can somehow be a guarantee for consumers. “In Italy, more than eight out of ten products that are dangerous for food safety come from abroad (86%)says Coldiretti. “Out of a total of 317 alerts detected in 2022, 106 came from imports from other EU states (33%) and 167 from non-EU countries (53%) and only 44 (14%) concerned products of national origin” . In short, Italian laws – and European ones – often seem to be a higher bar than others when it comes to food safety.
“Foreign food and drinks are more than ten times more dangerous than those made in Italy”continues Coldiretti, “with the number of agri-food products with irregular chemical residues beyond the legal limits that in Italy was equal to 6.4% in imported products, against an average of 0.6% of samples of national origin, according to with the clues. of the last report published by EFSA in 2023 on national pesticide residue data’.
The biggest health risks for Italian consumers, according to the Coldiretti report, come from dried figs from Türkiye for aflatoxinsfollowed by Spanish fish, due to its high mercury content, Polish chicken meat contaminated with salmonella, and then Spanish mussels and panda mussels with salmonella along with the bacterium Escherichia coli. Peanuts from Turkey, Iran and even the United States are also very dangerous due to the high content of carcinogenic aflatoxins as well as herbs and spices from India and litchi from China due to the presence of pesticides beyond the permissible limits, but also there is no shortage French oysters with norovirus causing violent gastroenteritis.
So here are the ten most contaminated foods in Italy in the last year.