[The food legislation evaluation of environmental chemicals in freshwater fish]

During the last 1 1/2 decades different regulatory limits have been given to value pollutants in fish under food-legal aspects. Their requested target, which consists of an effective consumer's protection however has been missed by various reasons: The production and distribution of environmental pollutants cannot be suppressed by limits for food. The selective elimination of limit-exceeding individuals from a lot is impossible. Treating both, natural pollutants like geogenic mercury and anthropogenic ones similar seems to be indefensible with regard to food law. Therefore proposals are made to rule only anthropogenic pollutants by law, when regulatory limits are planned to be supplemented. In case of natural distribution less stringent advisory limits seem to be more suitable.