Resumo
Food contaminated by biological agents that have the potential to cause damage to health has been a concern of Brazilian health authorities. The public consultation ANVISNMS No. 11 of 02/03/2011 (CP 11/2011) proposes new technical guidelines to establish minimum requirements in the evaluation of macroscopic and microscopic material in food and beverages including the limits of tolerance, in order to revoke resolution RDC/ANVISNMS No. 175 of 08/07/2003 (RDC 175/2003). The aim of this study was to submit the results of analysis of tomato products to the quality standards set down by current legislation (RDC 175/2003) and to the proposal of the technical regulation No CP 11/2011 arrived at after public consultation in order to outline and compare the profile demanded by both legislations and the tolerance limits. A retrospective study was performed examining the results of 134 investigations of tomato products traded in the region of São José do Rio Preto, Brazil in relation to foreign matter and the mycelial filament count (Howard method). The analyses were carried out in the Regional Laboratory Center of Instituto Adolfo Lutz in São José do Rio Preto in the period from 2000 to 2006. The results of analysis were assessed in respect to the quality standards established by resolution RDC 175/2003 and those proposed in CP 11/2011. Of the 134 results in this period, 33 (24.6%) were satisfactory because the samples were free of dirt and 101 (75.4%) presented, among other contamination, fragments of insects not from mechanical vectors that carry pathogens; of these, 86 (85.2%) contained as manyas 10 fragments of insects. (...) (AU)