permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Anton Doroszenko <a.doroszenko@cabi.org>
Date: Mon, Apr 3, 2017 at 1:25 PM
Subject: [SANET-MG] Report on pesticide residues in food in Europe
To: SANET <sanet-mg@googlegroups.com>


A useful summary of test results for pesticide residues in food in 2015 in
Europe has just been published (in German).



http://www.bvl.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/01_Lebensmittel/nbpsm/NBPSMR_
Zusammenfassung_2015.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=7



Here are a few highlights if you can’t read German.



·         18,765 tests done at 23 official labs in 16 countries

·         First time to compare conventional with organic foods

·         Samples residue free/no residues detected: 65% organic; 37%
conventional

·         Food samples with residues above statutory limits: cereals 1.1%;
foods of animal origin 0.4%; fruit and veg and other foods of plant origin
2.1%; processed foods 1.1%; baby foods 10.3%

·         Note that the high failure rate for baby foods was due to high
levels of phosphorous acid, which could originate as a metabolite of
fosetyl but could come from other sources

·         Foods where no sample exceeded the statutory limits (>100 tests
per food): potatoes, asparagus, peaches, bananas, plums, cherries, carrots,
melons, peas (without shells), sunflower seeds, cabbages, lemons, leeks.

·         Percentages of foods exceeding the statutory limit (>100 tests
per food): beans in their pods 4.7%; tea 3.9%; fresh herbs 3.5%; aubergines
3.0%; sweet peppers 2.3%; salad crops 1.6%; currents (black, red and white
combined) 1.6%; celeriac 1.5%; spinach 1.5%; mandarins 1.4%.

·         Some foods showed improvement from previous years, e.g. 8.3% of
mangoes exceeded limits in 2014, but that dropped to 2.7% in 2015.

·         Some crops showed higher residues in 2015 compared with 2014,
notably beans and tea.

·         Chlorate was found in 14.7% of test samples and exceeded limits
in 6.9% of tests

·         8.5% of tests of organic foods exceeded limits of pesticide
residues

·         Quaternary ammonium compounds used for disinfection of milk
processing facilities accounted for most of the tests exceeding limits in
foods of animal origin, but here organic did better than conventional.



I hope this summary is useful.



Anton Doroszenko

CAB International





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-- 
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared