Sesame seeds for tahini and halva production.

Which grade of sesame is used for tahini?

Both forms are bought, and which one is right for you is a question about your line rather than about the seed. Standard tahini is made from hulled seed: the coat is bitter and it darkens the paste, so it comes off before roasting and grinding in every case. The only question is where. A plant with its own hulling line — soaking, hulling, separation, cleaning, drying — buys natural white and does that step itself. A plant without one buys seed that has already been hulled.

There is a real trade-off in that choice and it is worth being explicit about, because it is not simply a question of paying for a step twice. Hulling is a wet process, and a wet process is where a microbiological problem is introduced — which is why hulled sesame carries a Salmonella specification and natural sesame does not. Buying hulled moves that risk to your supplier and puts it in a container; hulling in-house keeps it on a line you control and can validate. Neither is obviously safer. What matters is that whoever does it is testing for it. Halva sits in the same place: the same seed, the same question, with sugar and the cooking stage doing the rest.

What almost never fits is crushing-grade seed. It is selected for oil content and priced against a crusher’s economics, and its admixture and colour tolerances are wider than a paste can carry.

What specification should a tahini plant write?

Six lines carry almost all of the risk. These are the values we publish for the Nigerian grades, and each is on the contract because a paste plant has a specific reason to care about it — not because it is conventional to list it.

Why does free fatty acid content matter for tahini?

Because tahini is a suspension of sesame oil, and the free fatty acid figure is the state that oil is already in when it arrives. Oil in sound mature oilseed carries roughly half a per cent free fatty acids; where seed has been mechanically damaged or has become wet during harvest, handling or storage, the acidity of the oil can be much higher, and enzyme and microbial activity in high-moisture seed accelerates the same splitting. Nothing that happens in a warehouse takes it back down — free fatty acids are removed by refining, and a paste plant does not refine. A paste made from seed that arrived at the top of its FFA tolerance therefore starts further along than one made from seed at the bottom of it.

This is why FFA belongs in the contract rather than in a certificate you read after the container lands. We specify 2.0% maximum on the oil across the Nigerian grades. What we do not publish is a shelf-life figure in months, or a rate at which FFA climbs: the first is a function of your roast, your grind, your packaging and your storage, and the second depends on the moisture, temperature and handling of a specific parcel. No honest number for either comes from the seed alone.

Does colour actually matter, or is it cosmetic?

It is not cosmetic, and it is not really about colour either. Sesame is colour sorted to remove seeds that are dark because something is wrong with them — immature, heat damaged, mouldy, or a different species entirely. Removing them lifts the visual grade of the paste, but the reason it is worth paying for is that the same optical pass removes the fraction most likely to carry a problem.

Specify it as a standard rather than as a description. “White to creamy white” is what a specification should say about appearance; “bright” and “premium” are what a quotation says, and neither can be tested. Our sortex premium grade is colour sorted to 99.5% purity with admixture at 0.05% maximum, and the sorting standard is stated in the contract.

Which aflatoxin limit applies to sesame bought for tahini?

This is the question most worth getting right, and the answer is not the one most sesame pages give. Under Regulation (EU) 2023/915 sesame is not a named commodity — it falls under “groundnuts and other oilseeds” — and that category carries two different rows depending on what happens to the seed next.

Row 1.1.4 sets B1 at 8.0 µg/kg and the sum of aflatoxins at 15.0 µg/kg, and it applies to oilseeds to be subjected to sorting or other physical treatment before sale to the final consumer. Row 1.1.5 sets B1 at 2.0 µg/kg and the sum at 4.0 µg/kg, and it applies to oilseeds placed on the market as the only ingredient or processed. A paste plant is normally on the second row, not the first, and the difference is a factor of four.

There is a further consequence that catches tahini makers specifically: the sum limits also apply to processed products consisting of at least 80% of the product. Tahini is essentially all sesame. So the 4.0 µg/kg sum is not only a question about the seed you buy, it is a limit your finished paste has to meet.

Two exemptions exist and neither is a loophole a paste plant can use. The sorting route under Article 5 requires the consignment to be labelled as destined for sorting, to carry an indelible batch code, and not to be mixed beforehand with food destined for the final consumer. The crushing exemption under Article 6(3) requires the intended use to be declared on every package and on the accompanying document, with a crushing plant as the final destination. Article 6(2) is the backstop: absent clear information that the use is not food, the standard levels apply.

• —Decide which row your consignment sits on before you agree the specification, not after the analysis comes back
• —If you are on row 1.1.5, write 2.0 / 4.0 into the contract rather than accepting a certificate issued against 8.0 / 15.0
• —Remember the ≥80% rule applies to the paste you produce, not only to the seed you bought

Does the EU check tahini itself, or only the seed?

Both, now — and the second half of that is new. Regulation (EU) 2019/1793 lists origins whose consignments get increased official controls at the border. Nigerian sesame seeds are in Annex II for Salmonella at 50% frequency, which means half of all consignments are checked and an official certificate from the country of origin, sampling and analysis results, and a CHED are conditions of entry rather than paperwork niceties.

What changed is that the same instrument now lists a sesame derivative. Tahini and halva from sesame seeds originating in Syria were added to Annex I at 50% for Salmonella. It is the first time the finished paste rather than the seed appears in the annexes, and any tahini manufacturer should read it as a signal about where enforcement attention is going.

The Salmonella testing regime itself is specific, and it is stricter than a generic microbiological criterion. Annex III point 1(a) sets EN ISO 6579-1 as the reference method, five sample units for a consignment under 20 tonnes and ten at or above it, each unit at least 100 g, no pooling, and no detection of Salmonella in 25 g in every unit.

The positions above are stated as at the consolidated text applicable from 30 June 2026. Article 12 requires review at intervals not exceeding six months, so confirm the current position at each shipment cycle rather than relying on this page.

What about ethylene oxide?

It is worth understanding, because tahini has been at the centre of ethylene oxide recalls and because the way the limit is usually described is wrong twice. For sesame seeds the figure is 0.05 mg/kg, and it is neither an ordinary MRL nor the 0.01 default: Regulation (EU) 2015/868 moved ethylene oxide into Annex V, the annex reserved for substance-specific default values set to match achievable analytical limits.

The residue definition is the part that decides outcomes in practice. It is the sum of ethylene oxide and 2-chloro-ethanol, expressed as ethylene oxide, and it is the 2-chloro-ethanol half that produces most positive results, because ethylene oxide converts to it in the commodity.

One point of history is worth stating plainly, since it is routinely mis-attributed: the 2020–21 ethylene oxide crisis was Indian sesame, not Nigerian. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1540 added pesticide residues, at 50% checks, to Indian sesame's existing Annex II entry; that rate has since been cut to 20%, while India's Salmonella rate has risen from 20% to 30%. Ethylene oxide is not what Nigerian sesame gets stopped for.

What actually gets Nigerian sesame rejected?

Salmonella, overwhelmingly, and paperwork second. A query of the RASFF Window public database returned 267 notifications naming sesame with Nigeria among the countries of origin between 2019 and July 2026. Around three quarters were Salmonella and around a sixth were documentary or certificate failures. Everything chemical combined accounted for roughly one notification in twenty-five.

That number is from our own query of the public database and is quoted as such — it is not an official Commission statistic. But the shape of it is the useful part, and it points somewhere unexpected: for a tahini buyer importing from Nigeria, the two things worth auditing in a supplier are the microbiological controls and whether the document set arrives complete and correct. A certification badge answers neither.

It is also the reason we treat per-lot laboratory testing as commercial quality control rather than as a contractual guarantee, and say so. Under FOSFA terms quality is warranted at the time and place of shipment, and sampling and analysis follow the clause the parties actually selected.

How does tahini-grade sesame load and pack?

Natural white sesame ships in new 50 kg polypropylene bags at about 19 MT per 20ft container and 26 MT per 40ft. Hulled ships in 25 kg multi-layer paper or new PP bags at about 18 MT per 20ft, because the smaller bag and the lighter seed both cost cube.

A 40ft does not carry twice a 20ft: bagged sesame runs out of cube in a 20ft and out of payload in a 40ft. For a programme rather than a trial that is usually the argument for the larger box — the same tonnage on fewer bills of lading and fewer terminal handlings.

How current is this page?

Every regulatory figure above is quoted with the instrument that sets it, and each was verified against the primary text rather than against a summary of it. The aflatoxin rows are Regulation (EU) 2023/915 Annex I rows 1.1.4 and 1.1.5, with the exemptions at Articles 5 and 6. The border-control positions are Regulation (EU) 2019/1793 as at the consolidated version applicable from 30 June 2026, whose Article 12 forces review at intervals of no more than six months. The ethylene oxide position is Regulation (EU) 2015/868.

Two things are deliberately absent. There is no tahini yield figure, because yield is a property of your mill and your process rather than of the seed, and no shelf-life figure in months for the same reason. Where we could not verify something to our own satisfaction, this page says what to check rather than supplying a confident number.