DIET FOR APPENDIX VI: PESTICIDES

There are three main types of pesticide used on food crops: insecticides to kill insect pests, fungicides to kill fungal diseases, and herbicides to kill weeds. There are over 420 pesticides that can legally be used in Britain, and others are known to be used illegally. The vast majority of these pesticides leave residues on the crops, but there are time limits between when the crop is last sprayed and when it is harvested – this allows time for the residue to break down. Unfortunately, there is no legal requirement on growers to observe the safe period between the last spraying and the harvest – and no official means of

checking if they do so. Health and Safety Officers only visit farms once every 11 years, on average, due to shortage of manpower.

The only checks that take place are routine tests of foods for pesticide residues. Until recently, there was no legal limit on the amount of pesticides in food, although there were guidelines, and food above the recommended levels could be seized and destroyed. In July 1988, maximum residue limits (MRLs) came into force for cereals, and in January 1989 MRLs for fruit and vegetables were introduced. These limits have only been introduced by the British government because EEC legislation required them, and they do not cover post-harvest fungicides such as those sprayed on to stored potatoes.

The main burden of testing foods falls on local authority Environmental Health Officers, who are able to test for about 20 pesticides – only 5 per cent of those in use. Although the 20 they test for are those most widely used, this is still rather \ worrying, since there are about 400 pesticides whose misuse would go unnoticed. When foods are found with excess pesticide levels, they are simply destroyed – no effort is made to trace the source of the food or prevent further misuse of pesticides.

Pesticides are also monitored annually by the Total Diet Study, which considers a larger number of pesticides – over a hundred in recent years. Samples are taken that correspond to the national average diet, all the foods are combined and the mixture is tested for pesticide residues. Unfortunately, only about 25 samples are taken, representing a minute fraction of the total food eaten annually in Britain – the chances of missing high residues on certain crops is enormous. And the Total Diet Study is still only looking at a quarter of all the pesticides available for use.

When pesticides are banned in the West, the companies producing them often try to increase their sales to Third World countries, where safety regulations are less stringent – or non-existent. So imported foods may contain residues of pesticides that are banned in Britain. Despite this, there are no special provisions for testing imported foods -these are subjected to the same tests as home-grown produce. Paradoxically, pesticides that are banned in Britain are not tested for at all In America, where testing is rather more thorough, high pesticide residues have been found on imported food, including dangerous pesticides that have been banned in the USA. In many Third World countries, there are regular reports of pesticides being used very carelessly, or safety measures being ignored entirely. Deaths among farmworkers in Third World countries, due to pesticide misuse, are believed to be very high.

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