EC 466/2001 - EU contaminants framework in foodstuffs (superseded)
Commission Regulation (EC) No 466/2001 of 8 March 2001 set EU maximum levels for certain contaminants in foodstuffs. It recast the earlier EC 194/97 framework and was itself superseded by 2006 when that successor framework became applicable on 1 March 2007.
This page exists as a historical citation target for older source pages that cite EC 466/2001 rather than the later EC 1881/2006 or EU 2023/915 frameworks. Use it only for source-era provenance. For live EU regulatory comparisons, use eu2023-contaminants-maximum-levels or the relevant current companion page.
Scope
The regulation covered multiple contaminant families in foodstuffs, including nitrates, mycotoxins, heavy metals, 3-MCPD, and later amendments for additional contaminant classes. The heavy-metal section of the original framework covered lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), and mercury (reported as total mercury / tHg) across food matrices such as milk, infant formula, meat and offal, fishery products, cereals and pulses, vegetables, and other listed foodstuffs.
Food ingredients used in compound foods had to comply with the applicable maximum levels before addition, so dilution could not be used to make a non-compliant ingredient appear compliant in the finished compound food.
Selected wiki-relevant uses
| Source-era use | Metal | Value stated in source | Treatment in HMI |
|---|---|---|---|
| pehlivan2008-vegetable-oils-turkey-icp-aes cites EC 466/2001 as the benchmark for vegetable oils | Pb | 0.10 mg/kg | Preserve as an author-cited historical comparison; all Pb values in the Pehlivan 2008 oil set were below this value. |
The EC 466/2001 annexes changed through multiple amendments before the 2006 recast. When a source paper gives a specific matrix limit, preserve the source-era citation and avoid silently replacing it with a later EC 1881/2006 or EU 2023/915 value.
Relationship to later EU contaminant rules
EC 1881/2006 superseded EC 466/2001 and became the main EU contaminants framework for heavy metals in food from 2007 until the 2023 recast. EU 2023/915 is the current consolidated EU maximum-level framework and should be used for present-day compliance context.
How this page interacts with HMT&C
Per the HMT&C firewall, this page records historical EU regulatory context only. It does not set HMT&C certification thresholds and must not be cited as a current legal cap after its supersession date. Standards math should use this page only when preserving the regulatory benchmark cited by a pre-2007 source.
Sources
- Commission Regulation (EC) No 466/2001 of 8 March 2001, setting maximum levels for certain contaminants in foodstuffs. EUR-Lex CELEX: 32001R0466. Source URL: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32001R0466
- Commission Regulation (EC) No 1881/2006 of 19 December 2006, successor framework. See eu-1881-2006-contaminants-superseded.
Verification notes
- Created 2026-05-18 by Codex after the Pehlivan 2008 vegetable-oils source surfaced an EC 466/2001 citation without a matching regulation page.
- EUR-Lex identifies the rule as Commission Regulation (EC) No 466/2001 of 8 March 2001, Official Journal L 077, 16 March 2001, pages 1-13. The official text entered into force on the twentieth day after publication and applied from 5 April 2002; this page uses the application date as
effective_date. - EC 1881/2006 repealed and replaced EC 466/2001 as the practical EU contaminant framework from 1 March 2007; this page therefore marks EC 466/2001 as superseded and links the successor.
Page history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.