Aflatoxin and EU Limits: What Hazelnut Importers Should Check

Aflatoxin is the single most common reason a hazelnut consignment is rejected at an EU border. The limits are public, the testing is routine, and almost every failure traces back to something that could have been agreed in the contract. Here is what an importer needs to check.

What the EU limits actually are

Maximum levels are set by Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/915, which replaced Regulation (EC) No 1881/2006. For hazelnuts the regulation draws a line between nuts that will be sorted or physically treated before they reach the consumer and nuts sold ready to eat:

Two practical consequences follow. First, the category is a legal status, not a marketing label: if you buy under the higher limit, you must actually carry out the sorting or treatment step. Second, where hazelnuts in shell are analysed, the regulation assumes for calculation purposes that all contamination sits on the edible part — so an in-shell result is not diluted by shell weight.

For processed products containing at least 80% hazelnuts, the whole-hazelnut levels apply; below that threshold the general mixing rules in the regulation govern.

Where aflatoxin comes from

Aflatoxins are produced by Aspergillus moulds. In hazelnuts the risk concentrates in a few identifiable moments:

• On the ground. Nuts that sit on damp soil after dropping are the highest-risk fraction of any crop.
• During drying. Slow or interrupted drying leaves moisture in the kernel long enough for mould to establish.
• In storage. Temperature swings cause condensation inside bags and bulk bins.
• In transit. A container loaded warm and shipped through a temperature gradient can sweat.

None of these are exotic failures. They are ordinary handling mistakes, which is why traceability back to a specific orchard and a specific drying batch is worth more than any certificate.

Why sampling is the hard part

Aflatoxin contamination is not evenly distributed. A lot can be overwhelmingly clean and still contain a handful of heavily contaminated kernels, which means the sampling plan decides the result as much as the laboratory does. A small, casually drawn sample from one corner of a pallet tells you very little.

Practical consequence for a buyer: agree the sampling plan in the contract — number and size of incremental samples, how they are combined, who draws them, and which laboratory arbitrates if two results disagree. A dispute over a rejected container is the worst possible moment to discover that neither side wrote this down.

What to ask a supplier for

1. A certificate of analysis per lot, with B1 and total aflatoxin figures as numbers — not a “complies” statement.
2. The laboratory’s name and method. HPLC with immunoaffinity clean-up is the common reference approach.
3. The sampling plan used, and whether it matches the plan your own authority will apply on arrival.
4. Traceability records linking the lot to an orchard, a harvest window and a drying batch.
5. Moisture at dispatch, because moisture is the variable that turns a clean lot into a contaminated one during a four-week voyage.

Controls that actually reduce risk

Testing tells you what happened; handling decides what happens. The controls that matter are unglamorous: harvesting promptly rather than leaving nuts on wet ground, drying to a stable moisture without interruption, separating and rejecting the ground-contact fraction, storing at steady temperature and humidity, and keeping lots small enough that a problem in one does not contaminate a season.

Optical and density sorting removes a large share of visually defective kernels, and defective kernels correlate strongly with contamination — but sorting is a reduction step, not a guarantee. It cannot rescue a lot that was mishandled from the start.

How we handle it

Moisture, aflatoxin, calibre and foreign matter are checked lot by lot, and the results travel with the shipment in the certificate of analysis. Because the crop comes from our own orchards in Giresun, a lot can be traced back to the block it was harvested from rather than to an anonymous aggregator. The full control sequence is on the quality assurance page, and the documents that accompany a shipment are listed under export & logistics.

If you are writing a specification and want the aflatoxin clause to match the category you actually intend to buy under, send us the destination and the intended use with your enquiry — request a quote and we will quote against it.

This article summarises publicly available regulatory limits for general guidance and is not legal advice. Confirm current requirements for your destination market before contracting.

Related reading

• Hazelnut calibre and grading: a buyer’s guide
• The Turkish hazelnut harvest calendar
• Packaging and container loading for hazelnut exports
• Why Giresun? Origin, Tombul and what it means for buyers