Trinidad and Tobago Food and Drugs metal limits

Scope

This page records HMI metal limits in the Trinidad and Tobago Food and Drugs Act Chapter 30:01 consolidation updated to 31 December 2007. The routeable rows come from the Food and Drugs Regulations and the Fish and Fishery Products Regulations.

The rows cover colours for use in or upon food, named foods in the poisonous-substances table, residual foods not named in that table, food-grade salt, and fish or fishery products.

Exact limit and units

The source states values in parts per million or ppm; HMI stores them as ug/kg.

The structured register contains each named Division 6 food row separately, including acids, salts, animal products, produce, gelatin and gelling agents, dried herbs and spices, juices, beer, wine, beverages, and tea.

How tested

Division 2 says arsenic and lead in food colours are determined by the official method. Division 6 says the named food table values are determined by an acceptable method. Division 19 states food-grade salt contaminant limits but does not name a specific metal method in the captured text. Fish and Fishery Products Regulations Table 1 provides accepted levels; the adjacent schedule also includes microbiological tests and limits for fish assessment.

Enforcement posture

The Food and Drugs Act prohibits sale of harmful, unfit, adulterated, or unsanitary food. The Division 6 table is framed as an exemption from the Act’s harmful-substance provision when named foods contain listed substances at or below the table values and no other harmful substances at injurious levels. Food colours above the stated arsenic or lead values may not be sold for use in or upon food. Fish regulation 62(18) requires acceptable levels of trace metals, pesticides, and chemicals to correspond to Second Schedule Table 1.

History of changes

The captured source is a Laws of Trinidad and Tobago consolidation updated to 31 December 2007. The Food and Drugs Regulations are identified as GN 130/1964, with amendments shown in the source margins; the Fish and Fishery Products Regulations are identified as LN 220/1998.

How it compares

This source combines older general food poisonous-substance exemptions with a later, fish-specific schedule. For fish and fishery products, the Fish and Fishery Products Regulations provide a more specific lead value of 2 ppm and methylmercury values of 0.5 ppm or 1 ppm, while Division 6 still contains a broader marine and fresh-water animal-products arsenic/lead row. Downstream comparisons should preserve both source rows and prefer the more specific fish schedule where the product fit is fish or fishery products.

Sources

• Food and Drugs Act Chapter 30:01: food metal limits in regulations and fishery products schedule

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.