EU Regulation 2018/73 - Mercury-compound MRLs in food and feed
Commission Regulation (EU) 2018/73 of 16 January 2018 amended Annexes II and III to Regulation (EC) No 396/2005 for maximum residue levels (MRLs) of mercury compounds in or on certain products. The regulation expresses mercury-compound residues as mercury. For the cereals group, including rice, the MRL is 0.01 mg/kg, equivalent to 10 ug/kg.
Scope
The regulation is an EU pesticide-residue MRL instrument, not the general food-contaminants framework under Regulation (EC) No 1881/2006 or EU 2023/915. It applies to mercury compounds in or on listed food and feed commodities. The source that triggered this page, enamorado-montes2021-mercury-rice-colombia-mojana, uses the rice value as an EU reference point for total mercury in rice grain.
Exact limits and units
| Commodity group | Commodity | MRL |
|---|---|---|
| 0500000 Cereals | Rice (0500060, within cereals group) | 0.01 mg/kg as mercury |
The MRL is listed in the mercury-compounds column as “Mercury compounds (sum of mercury compounds expressed as mercury).” The 0.01 mg/kg cereals-group value corresponds to 10 ug/kg.
Enforcement posture
The regulation is directly applicable EU law and entered into force on the twentieth day after publication in the Official Journal. It remains a cited EU reference for mercury-compound MRLs in commodity groups covered by Regulation (EC) No 396/2005. Because it is a pesticide-residue MRL rule, source pages should distinguish it from contaminant maximum-level rules when using it as a comparator.
Sources
- EUR-Lex CELEX:32018R0073 - Commission Regulation (EU) 2018/73 of 16 January 2018, OJ L 13, 18.1.2018, pp. 8-20. Access: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2018/73/oj/eng
- enamorado-montes2021-mercury-rice-colombia-mojana - Trigger source for the rice-grain mercury comparator.
Cross-links
Verification notes
- Created 2026-05-18 during Codex manual-fetch ingest because a source page cited EU Regulation 2018/73 as the 10 ug/kg rice comparator and no regulation page existed.
- The official EUR-Lex PDF table lists
0500000 CEREALS 0,01 (*); rice appears as commodity code0500060within that cereals group.
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.