The National Residue Survey  is an Australian Government program conducted on behalf of industry that monitors agricultural products and meat producing animals for residues of agricultural and veterinary chemicals as well as some environmental and industrial contaminants. Testing is carried out for over 100 different compounds. This Survey has been carried out for 40 years. (read more)

Participation in residue testing is a condition for compliance with the Australian Standard for the hygienic production and transportation of meat and meat products for human consumption and is a condition of licensing to slaughter livestock for human consumption.

Conventional livestock production systems rely on the proper use of a wide range of agricultural and veterinary chemicals and current analytical technology can detect chemical residues at very low concentrations. It is therefore to be expected that a wide range of chemicals will be detected in agricultural products at very low levels and in fact in all products of the natural environment.

In these circumstances the detection of a residue is not a matter of concern except when the use of the relevant chemical is unauthorised or its concentration is greater than a limit set in either the context of export trade or human health. In reality, human health, although of paramount importance, is rarely an issue with respect to residues since trade associated limits are set at levels far below those required to protect human health.

The World Trade Organization Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (WTO SPS Agreement), which came into effect in 1995 following conclusion of the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations, provides for measures implemented by member countries to safeguard human, animal and plant life and health to be subjected to scientific scrutiny. The WTO SPS Agreement also requires such standards to be based, as far as possible, on international standards, which in the case of residues are the standards set by the Codex Alimentarius Commission. Measures that provide a higher level of protection must be scientifically justifiable and not be a disguised restriction of trade.

This important change to the trading environment for Australian agricultural industries has focused attention on the need for residue standards to be scientifically based and for data from residue-testing programs, such as those conducted by NRS, to be capable of withstanding scientific scrutiny. The NRS responded to this challenge by giving a high priority to ensuring the proficiency and performance of its participating laboratories.

The general purpose of residue monitoring is to quantify the occurrence of residues in products, to confirm that residues in products are within internationally accepted limits, and to alert responsible authorities when limits are exceeded so that corrective action can be taken at the property of origin to prevent unacceptable residues occurring in the future.

The survey is designed to confirm Australia’s status as a producer of clean meat.