Overview
The EFSA Panel on Nutrition, Novel Foods and Food Allergens assessed whole house crickets in frozen, dried and powder forms and concluded the novel food is safe under the proposed uses. The applicant supplied batch analyses of arsenic, mercury, lead and cadmium for five batches of each form (Table 5). The Panel notes that the EU sets no maximum levels of heavy metals for insects as food.
Key numbers
- Frozen: lead 0.033 to 0.038 mg/kg; cadmium 0.011 to 0.015 mg/kg, with one cell printed “0012”; arsenic below 0.02 mg/kg in four batches and 0.03 mg/kg in one (Table 5, p. 8).
- Dried: lead below 0.01 to 0.063 mg/kg; cadmium 0.028 to 0.091 mg/kg; arsenic 0.022 to 0.064 mg/kg; mercury below 0.01 mg/kg (Table 5, p. 8).
- Powder: lead 0.068 to 0.075 mg/kg; cadmium 0.025 to 0.030 mg/kg; arsenic 0.056 to 0.064 mg/kg (Table 5, p. 8).
- Proposed specifications for dried and powder forms: cadmium below 100, lead below 75, arsenic below 70 and mercury below 25 µg/kg (Table 16, p. 14).
Methods (brief)
ICP-MS after digestion per NEN-EN 13805, in accredited laboratories; detection limits are not stated beyond the ”<” values. Arsenic is total arsenic.
Evidence Fitness
Direct batch data for farmed cricket products (tier B: regulatory opinion reporting applicant data, not a market survey). Only 15 batches from one applicant, so results describe a controlled production system rather than the market. The frozen batch #9 cadmium cell is unreadable as printed and is not stored.