Scope
Paraguay Decree No. 1335/2019 incorporates MERCOSUR/GMC Resolution No. 12/11 into Paraguay’s national legal order. The annex applies maximum limits for inorganic contaminants in food to trade within MERCOSUR, trade between states parties, and extra-zone imports.
HMI records the annex rows for total arsenic, lead, cadmium, total mercury, and tin. The regulation does not apply to foods for infants and young children, which are governed by specific technical regulations.
Exact limit and units
The annex states most limits in mg/kg; HMI stores them as ug/kg by multiplying by 1000. Wine rows are stated in mg/L and are marked that way in the structured row basis and notes.
| Species | Source range or exact row family | Structured values |
|---|---|---|
| tAs | Food categories across fats and oils, sugars, honey, cocoa/chocolate, beverages, wine, cereals, produce, mushrooms, pulses, fruits, tea/yerba, coffee, edible ice/ice creams, dairy, salt, meats, offal, eggs, fish, molluscs, and crustaceans | 10 to 1000 ug/kg; wine 200 ug/L-equivalent source unit |
| Pb | Food categories across fats and oils, sugars, honey, cocoa/chocolate, beverages, wine, cereals, soybean, produce, mushrooms, pulses, fruits, tea/yerba, coffee, edible ice/ice creams, dairy, salt, meats, offal, eggs, fish, molluscs, and crustaceans | 10 to 2000 ug/kg; wine 150 ug/L-equivalent source unit |
| Cd | Honey, cocoa/chocolate, beverages, wine, cereals, soybean, produce, mushrooms, pulses, fruits, tea/yerba, coffee, edible ice/ice creams, dairy, salt, meats, liver, kidney, fish with named exceptions, molluscs, and crustaceans | 10 to 2000 ug/kg; wine 10 ug/L-equivalent source unit |
| tHg | Fish except predators; predatory fish; cephalopod molluscs; bivalve molluscs; crustaceans | 500 ug/kg; predatory fish 1000 ug/kg |
| Sn | Beverages in tinplate containers, including fruit and vegetable juices; foods in tinplate containers except beverages | 150000 ug/kg and 250000 ug/kg |
The structured register contains every numeric row from the annex. Cadmium in fish is represented as separate rows for the general fish category and the source’s named exceptions: bonito, mojarra, eel, lisa, jurel, emperor fish, mackerel, sardine, tuna, and acedia/lenguadillo at 0.10 mg/kg; melba at 0.20 mg/kg; and anchovy and swordfish at 0.30 mg/kg.
How tested
The annex gives application rules rather than a dedicated analytical method. Maximum levels apply to the edible portion unless a specific row says otherwise. For dried, diluted, transformed, or compound products, the regulation requires concentration or dilution factors, ingredient proportions, and analytical quantification limits to be considered. For liquid products, limits may be expressed in mg/L where density is within plus or minus 5% of water.
Enforcement posture
The decree applies the annex in Paraguay from the decree’s entry into force and assigns compliance to the Ministry of Public Health and Social Welfare through its technical bodies and other linked public agencies. The incorporated MERCOSUR resolution applies to states-party territory, intra-MERCOSUR trade, and extra-zone imports.
History of changes
MERCOSUR/GMC Resolution No. 12/11 was adopted in Asuncion on 17 June 2011 and replaced MERCOSUR/GMC Resolutions No. 102/94 and No. 35/96. Paraguay Decree No. 1335/2019, dated 20 February 2019, incorporated that resolution into Paraguay’s national legal order and partially repealed Decree No. 17.056/1997 where it had implemented the older MERCOSUR contaminant resolutions.
How it compares
Paraguay’s decree is a national implementation of the MERCOSUR inorganic-contaminant schedule. It is comparable to other broad food-contaminant maximum-level regulations, but downstream comparisons must preserve the species and unit choices: arsenic is total arsenic unless the source says otherwise, mercury is total mercury, and wine rows are stated in mg/L while most other rows are mg/kg.
Sources
Update history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and 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.
| Commit | Date | Change | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| a8052bb | 2026-08-09 | major | 1 source added; contamination-profile values revised; 7 sections added |