We are delighted to announce this week the appointment of Anthony Levy as the chairman of the Eat in Colour campaign management board, as you will have read on the front page of this issue.

Anthony comes with a depth and breadth of business experience, which, combined with his interest in health issues, will be invaluable to the campaign.

It has been a slow start, but we have backing from across the industry to make a real difference to the consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables.

The management board will unveil campaign initiatives later this year.

Now is the time for you to get involved.

Meanwhile, this month we have once again seen the media stir up the issue of pesticide residues. Despite the fact that Maximum Residue Levels (MRLs) for many products are being reduced to analytical zero, and that the monitoring programme actively targets areas where it is believed problems will be found, the results published in the annual report of the Pesticides Residues Committee are remarkably consistent with previous years.

About 70 per cent of samples tested are free of residues and approximately 30 per cent show residues, which has been the pattern since the start of the monitoring programme.

Some exceedances of the MRLs were found during the 2005 testing, but risk assessments concluded that there was no concern for health.

The FPC provides a code of practice for the control of pesticides and the industry needs to address this issue in terms of the negative impact in the minds of consumers. We would be delighted to hear your thoughts on this subject.