PLM & Compliance Blog English

Navigating Pesticides and Contaminants for Food Industry Compliance

Written by Hamidreza Sohrabi | Jul 4, 2025 8:41:16 AM

Food safety is no longer just a regulatory requirement—it’s a top concern for consumers worldwide, and a core aspect of effective regulatory compliance strategies. With rising public awareness, high-profile recalls, and an increasingly transparent global supply chain, both consumers and regulators are demanding higher standards and greater accountability from food manufacturers. As a result, companies must go beyond basic compliance and take a comprehensive approach to risk management, particularly when it comes to undeclared impurities.

Understanding Food Impurities

Undeclared impurities in everyday products threaten both public health and brand reputation, and as consumer awareness and regulatory scrutiny of food safety continue to grow, manufacturers face increasing pressure to manage not just food safety broadly, but contaminants specifically. Managing contaminants effectively is now a fundamental part of ensuring regulatory compliance in the food industry, especially as impurity limits tighten across global markets. 

Impurities—unintended substances that may enter food products— can originate from various sources and pose significant risks to both consumer health and brand reputation. Common types include:

  • Pesticide residues, which result from agricultural practices
  • Veterinary drug residues, introduced through treatments administered to food-producing animals
  • Contaminants such as heavy metals, mycotoxins, dioxins, and naturally occurring toxins

Even in trace amounts, these impurities can compromise product quality, lead to regulatory recalls, and erode consumer trust.  

As supply chains grow more complex and global regulations continue to evolve, manufacturers must adopt a proactive, internationally informed approach to identifying and managing these risks. Doing so is essential not only for protecting public health but also for ensuring compliance and maintaining competitiveness in global markets. 

Global Regulatory Frameworks: A Comparative Overview

Here’s a look into how global impurity regulations differ across countries:

  • India integrates contaminant and residue rules into one regulation under FSSAI.
  • The European Union consolidated contaminant rules under Regulation (EU) 2023/915 but still regulates pesticide residues separately via 396/2005. Manufacturers often face multiple Maximum Residue Levels (MRLs) for the same substance, with transition periods. A notable complication within this regulatory framework is the existence of multiple MRLs for the same substance, where a newly revised limit has been adopted but is scheduled to enter into force at a future date providing manufacturers with a transition period to adjust to the upcoming changes.
  • Australia and New Zealand share a Food Standards Code for contaminants (Schedule 19) but regulate pesticide residues separately through Schedule 20 (Australia) and MPI Food Notices (New Zealand).
  • Indonesia enforces impurity limits through separate regulations depending on the contaminant type.
  • The United States requires navigating oversight from both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The FDA tracks contaminants such as heavy metals and mycotoxins, while the EPA sets tolerance levels for pesticides. This dual structure requires manufacturers to assess and meet two overlapping sets of limits, which adds to the complexity of maintaining compliance.

This intricate and varied landscape creates challenges for companies exporting to multiple regions, especially as impurity limits evolve more rapidly and less uniformly than those for the more unified categories, like food additives.

The Compliance Challenge

Impurity regulations are highly fragmented and vary widely across regions, making global compliance a complex task—especially as these standards evolve rapidly. For exporters, this means navigating a patchwork of requirements that can change with little notice, increasing the burden on compliance teams and slowing market access. Adopting Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and regulatory compliance solutions for food safety enables companies to centralize specifications, track ingredient-level regulations, and maintain a clear audit trail—essential for meeting today’s complex compliance demands. 

When impurity standards must be manually tracked, the risks multiply: overlooked changes can lead to costly recalls, regulatory penalties, or reputational damage. 

Empowering Compliance Through Digital Solutions

Impurity regulations are highly region-specific and evolve quickly. Relying on manual tracking increases the risk of missing key changes, leading to delays, recalls, or regulatory violations. 

To stay ahead, organizations are adopting cloud-based PLM systems for CPG manufacturers that integrate regulatory intelligence and lifecycle tracking in a single platform that consolidate updates, reduce manual work, and support confident, cross-border compliance. Food manufacturers are increasingly turning to PLM and regulatory compliance software for food and beverage compliance to unify data, manage regulatory risks, and accelerate safe product launches across global markets. 

Trace One Regulatory Compliance Solution to Manage Global Impurity Regulations

As global impurity regulations grow increasingly complex and fragmented, manual tracking methods are no longer sufficient. Navigating diverse, rapidly evolving standards across multiple jurisdictions requires speed, accuracy, and real-time visibility. Advanced regulatory compliance management software helps teams meet these demands by automating updates, alerting users to regional shifts, and centralizing documentation workflows. Digital tools play a critical role in enabling users to manage complexity with greater efficiency and confidence—reducing the risk of non-compliance while improving operational agility.

Trace One Regulatory Compliance equips food and beverage manufacturers with timely access to structured, global regulatory data on impurities and additives—helping streamline compliance processes, reduce risk, and accelerate decision-making across markets. 

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The Path Forward for Global Brands

In a world where consumers demand transparency and supply chains span continents, maintaining compliance with food impurity and safety standards is essential. With digital tools like Trace One Regulatory Compliance, manufacturers can move beyond reactive tracking and adopt a smarter, more efficient compliance strategy—reducing risk, accelerating time to market, and strengthening brand trust.

As the pace of change accelerates, using modern compliance software for food industry applications is no longer optional—it’s essential for agility and long-term success. Stay ahead of evolving impurity regulations and protect your brand reputation. Explore the platform now, or request a demo today.