# Potential Metal Contamination in Foods of Animal Origin--Food Safety Aspects
## 3 Current Regulatory Standards
Based on these aspects, the muscle and edible offal of wild animals may be unsuitable for consumption due to the higher hazard and risk. However, the consumption of wild animal tissues is considered healthy due to their beneficial physiological content and composition (excluding different contaminants, e.g., heavy metals, industrial contaminants such as dioxins, pesticides, etc.). Thus, the regulation of acceptable levels for environmental contaminants and other chemicals in game meat and edible offal would be very important to ensure consumer safety. Furthermore, heavy metals and other potentially toxic elements can contaminate birds' bodies during feeding by uptake of contaminated sources (e.g., water, feed plants, etc.) and, through their kinetic processes, can be excreted via eggs, resulting in residue in them [135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142]. Thus, they can be measured in egg components (egg white, egg yolk) in amounts that can pose potential hazards to human consumers [143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148]. Based on available experimental data, the following variable metal concentrations with a wide range were detected in chicken eggs: Cd: 0.324 ng/kg-0.06 mg/kg (egg white), \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c c} \hline \hline
**Foodstuffs** & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**Maximum Levels (mg/kg Wet Weight)**} \\ \cline{2-4} \cline{3-4} \multicolumn{1}{c}{} & **Lead** & **Cadmium** & **Mercury** \\ \hline Muscle meat of following fish: anchovy (_Engraulis_ sp.), Alaska pollock (_Theragraa chalcogranuma_), Atlantic cod (_Gadus morhua_), Atlantic herring (_Clupea harengus_), Basa (_Pangasius bocourti_), carp (species belonging to the Cyprinidae family), common dab (_Limanda limanda_), mackerel (_Somorp_ sp.), European flounder (_Platichlthys flesus_), European plaice (_Pleuronces platessa_), European sprat (_Sprattus sprattus_), Mekong giant catfish (_Pangasiuadong gigs_), pollock (_Pollachius pollachius_), saithe (_Pollachius vireng_), salmon and trout (_Salmo sp., _Oncorhynchus sp., except _S. trutta_), sardine or Pilchard (_Dussumeria sp., _Sardina_ sp., _Sardinella_ sp., _Sardinopos sp.), sole (_Solea solea_), striped catfish (_Pangasiuadon lympublanus_), and whiting (_Merlanguis merlangus_) Crustaceans, excluding brown meat of crab and excluding head and thorax meat of lobster and similar large crustaceans (_Neplropidae_ and _Palinuridae_) Bivalve molluscs Cephalopods (without viscera) Marine gastropods & 1.5 & 1.0 & 0.50 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 3: _Cont._1.44 ng/kg-0.04 mg/kg (egg yolk), and 0.27 ug/kg-0.18 mg/kg (whole egg); Pb: 0.12-0.13 mg/kg (egg white), 0.06-0.09 mg/kg (egg yolk), and 12.85 ug/kg-1.330 mg/kg (whole egg); As: 5.82 \(\pm\) 0.723 ng/kg (egg white), 15.4 \(\pm\) 3.13 ng/g (egg yolk), and 0.29 ug/kg-1.8 mg/kg (whole egg); Hg: 0.04-33.10 ug/kg (whole egg) [135, 136, 142, 145, 148]. However, besides the EU legal regulations, Member States are entitled to establish their own supplementary regulations in areas not covered by Community law. In accordance with this, there is a local national regulation in Hungary. Copper is an essential metal, but it may be hazardous if it enters the body in higher amounts. Nevertheless, its tolerable maximum limit value is not regulated in different types of food in the EU. Regulation No. 49/2014 (IV. 29.) of the Ministry of Agriculture sets the limit values for copper as a technological contaminant in various food groups and types (meat products, canned and preserved meat products, liver pate, game meat) and regulates the permissible lead content in special formulas for infants and young children as a contaminant of environmental origin (Table 4) [149].