Overview
This short Italian monitoring report describes official random sampling of 60 milk, cheese and dessert consignments from other EU countries arriving in Turin in 2007, tested for arsenic, cadmium, chromium, iron, mercury and lead. All milk and dessert results were below or near the quantification limits. One German cheese had 0.05 ppm lead, which complied with the law after the milk-to-cheese conversion factor was applied.
Key numbers
- German cheese lot: lead 0.05 ppm on first sampling and on resampling; 0.005 ppm after the 9.74 kg-milk-per-kg conversion factor (Risultati, p. 34).
- Milk (26 lots) and desserts (2 lots): metals below or near the LOQs (lead LOQ 0.004 mg/kg; arsenic, cadmium and mercury 0.01 mg/kg) (Risultati, p. 34).
Methods (brief)
Microwave digestion of 7 g of milk or 2 g of cheese, then graphite furnace atomic absorption for arsenic, cadmium, chromium and lead, flame atomic absorption for iron and a direct mercury analyser for mercury. Quantification limits are stated; reference materials are not reported.
Evidence Fitness
Mostly qualitative: apart from one cheese lead value, no concentrations are printed, so milk results cannot be used as numbers. The cheese varieties are not given except for one brand-named product, so this is not evidence for Swiss or Monterey Jack cheese. Pasteurized milk fat level is not stated, so it is not evidence for skim or semi-skimmed milk either.