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, Mercury Accumulation in Commercial Varieties of Oryza sativa L. Cultivated in Soils of La Mojana Region, Colombia, uses the rice value as an EU reference point for total mercury in rice grain.

Exact limits and units

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
• Mercury Accumulation in Commercial Varieties of Oryza sativa L. Cultivated in Soils of La Mojana Region, Colombia - Trigger source for the rice-grain mercury comparator.

Cross-links

• Mercury, Total
• Rice
• Rice (white, brown, wild — bulk grain)

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 code 0500060 within 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.