Adrian Barlow of English Apples & Pears has responded to last week's Environmental Working Group's (EWG) so-called 'Dirty Dozen' list, which named apples as the item of fresh produce likely to be most contaminated with pesticide residues.
The US-based analyst's report, part of its 2013 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce, measured pesticide contamination on 48 popular fruits and vegetables, based on an analysis of more than 28,000 samples tested by the US Department of Agriculture and federal Food and Drug Administration.
Results saw apples move ahead of celery, peaches and strawberries to top the Dirty Dozen rankings – a position that Barlow said was unfair, from a UK perspective at least.
'Apples don't deserve the tag or to be tarnished by it,' he told Eurofruit. 'Over the last 20 years we have seen a dramatic change in how apples are produced in the UK and that change is huge. A range of pesticides have been reduced hugely, there has also been a much greater understanding of how one can use beneficial insects and change cultivation practises so there are greater number of beneficials in orchards to reduce the pests and replace chemicals.
Barlow highlighted that there had also been a 'huge improvement' in the understanding of measures that can be taken to prevent diseases, such as the importance of moving leaf litter and better hygiene, leading to a 'considerable reduction' in number of chemicals being used.
'Many of our suppliers now are achieving the objective of supplying residue-free fruit, so the suggestion that apples produced in England contain a wide range of chemicals is not true and a complete generalisation,' he noted. 'I would never say there isn’t a stupid idiot of a grower out there using chemicals in the wrong way, but on the whole apple growers are working brilliantly to eliminate pesticide use.'
Meanwhile, US-based crop protection organisation CropLife America insisted that the detection of pesticide residues on food, such as those found in the Dirty Dozen report, did not necessarily mean that safe levels of tolerance were being exceeded.
'CropLife America stresses that the detection of pesticide residues on food do not indicate harm, and that detected residues very rarely exceed safe tolerance levels established by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),' said Dr Barbara Glenn, senior vice-president of science and regualtory affairs at the body. 'In fact, the US Department of Agriculture Pesticide Data Programme’s 2011 annual summary, published on 23 February, found residues exceeding EPA tolerance levels in only 0.27 per cent of the nearly 12,000 samples analysed. Once again, this comprehensive annual report confirms that our food is safe.
“CLA strives to communicate to American consumers the importance of maintaining a diet including nutritious fruits and vegetables,' she added. 'A study published in Food and Chemical Toxicology confirmed the importance of a healthy diet for preventing diseases, and estimated that 20,000 cases of cancer could be prevented each year with increased fruit and vegetable consumption. The benefits of eating produce grown with the help of crop protection products significantly outweigh the perceived risks.”
