To recall, the purpose of Council Directive 96/23/EC is to adopt and implement a national residue monitoring plan for specific groups of residues. Specific sampling levels and frequencies are laid down by the Directives as are the groups of substances that need to be monitored for each food commodity. In practice, the Member States’ national plan target those groups of animals/gender/age combinations where the probability of finding residues is the highest. The results are then forwarded to the Commission on an annual basis.
The purpose of this Commission report is to summarise the results of the national residue monitoring plans for the year 2005. It includes data on the ten new Member States. Altogether, around 707 163 targeted samples and 73 000 suspect samples were taken in all Member States in 2005, i.e. 780 163 samples for residue control in all food commodities.