April, 1999
The annual Pesticide Data Program annual summary shows presumptive violations of pesticide residue levels in only 5% of the samples and indicates levels of pesticide use are not consistent with a worst-case scenario.
PDP’s seventh annual report covers the 1997 season. State and federal scientists collected 8,177 samples, including 6,321 from fruit and vegetables. Other samples came from potatoes, milk, wheat and soybeans, the latter two from the 1996 crop year. Approximately 86% of the samples were from domestic crops, 11% imported, 2% of mixed national origin and less than 1% of unknown origin.
Of the 409 presumptive tolerance violations, all but 29 were in fruits and vegetables. Most of these were for residues where no tolerance was established. The report notes that residues that were detected were generally below tolerance levels. This is due to the dissipation of residues between the farm and marketplace and the standard food preparation techniques applied prior to testing.
"PDP’s test of residues show that farmers are using significantly fewer pesticides than would be suggested by the worst case assessment," states the report’s executive summary.
Of the fruit and vegetable samples, 57% contained at least one residue, including 70% of the fresh produce and 45% of the processed products. More than one residue was detected in about 30% of the fruit and vegetables.
The PDP report breaks down residues into preharvest and postharvest applications. In the latest repot, about 24% of the residues detected in fruits and vegetables were from postharvest uses.
Residue data for fresh versus processed products can be dramatically different, as in the case of green beans. Residue detections are fewer in apple juice than in fresh fruit, except for carbaryl and dimethoate. This may be due to the variety of apples chosen for processing into juice and dissipation of residues during processing. Canned peaches show generally lower residues than fresh product.
What about the relative residue levels of domestic versus foreign produce? PDP compared U.S. and Chilean grapes and peaches from 1994-1996 and U.S. and Mexican tomatoes in 1996 and 1997. More presumptive tolerance violations were found in Chilean grapes and peaches while the numbers of violations for tomatoes were exactly the same between the U.S. and Mexico.
The participating states were California, Florida, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Texas, Washington, Colorado, Maryland, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Samples were taken from six fresh fruit and vegetable commodities (pears, potatoes, spinach, sweet potatoes, tomatoes and winter squash) and six processing commodities (apple juice, green beans, orange juice, canned peaches, canned spinach and frozen winter squash.
The Fruit Growers News