EU Commission may revise ceramic food contacts Directive

Recently, The European Commission is considering revising the Directive on ceramic articles intended to come into contact with food. A revision would take into account the scope of the Directive, legal limits of lead, cadmium and other metals, as well as test conditions for checking compliance of such materials and articles.

In order to investigate if future legislation should consider setting legal limits to it, the Commission has launched a public survey on what is perceived as "occasional use" of ceramic tableware.

Within this discussion the role of JRC is to provide data on 1) what metals migrate from ceramic tableware, and 2) how much migrates. New analytical methods may detect metals at much lower levels.

In the end of the year 2012, SME panel suggested adopting a two phase approach to lower the limits for the release of metals from materials and articles into food. In the first phase new limits for lead and cadmium will be laid down in a new measure under Article (5) of Regulation (EC) No 1935/2004 on materials and articles intended to come into contact with food. In the second phase other objectives including new limits for metals other than lead and cadmium and materials other than ceramic materials (notably glass) will be investigated.

Based on these considerations the Commission considers proposing the above mentioned values of 5 μg/kg food for cadmium and 10 μg/kg food for lead as new specific migration limits. This proposal would reduce the limits currently in force by a factor 60 for cadmium and a factor 400 for lead. These proposed values are based on health based guidance values set by EFSA.