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Remember Snow White and peel your apples!
We are in the middle of apple season and it’s tempting to just pick one and bite into it. That’s fine if it’s from your own garden or from an organic orchard, but if not you may well reach for a poisoned fruit. Washing your apple carefully won’t help either, to be on the safe side you need to peel it – which, according to a new study published in the US, should at least reduce the amount of pesticides considerably. The scientists developed an imaging technology which showed that pesticides penetrate the skin of the apple and hence cannot be removed through washing. Based on data from the US Department of Agriculture which measured 59 different fruit and vegetable categories, the US NGO Consumer Report concluded that on 20% of the samples the pesticide residue was so high that it posed a ‘significant risk’ to the consumer. That’s the US for you, you may think. Well, think again….
Brexit and the opportunity to weaken pesticide limits in our food
An analysis by the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) UK shows that between 2022 and 2024, the British government increased the limits of pesticide residue in food still considered to be safe for consumers. “While most of the food types affected are fruit and vegetables, the impact is broader and includes coffee beans and grains such as wheat and rice. Tea has suffered some of the most dramatic rises, with safety limits for the chemicals Boscalid and Chlorantraniliprole both increased 4,000 times.” Over all, the safety limits for 49 different substances were raised, 15 of which are classified as highly hazardous pesticides – i.e. they pose a significant risk to human health and the environment.
The descendants of the evil fairytale queen that handed the poisoned apple to Snow White have gone corporate and peddle the poisons they manufacture globally – from Syngenta, to Bayer (Monsanto) Crop Science, BASF, and Corteva Agriscience to FMC. While Bayer/Monsanto is best known for pesticides containing glyphosate, FMC’s ‘bestseller’ is the insecticide chlorantraniliprole. Chlorantraniliprole? That’s the stuff in tea for which the safety limit has been increased 4,000 fold…
Bad actors, acting together…
As if this wasn’t bad enough: we are supposed to eat a varied diet including at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. Potatoes, onions, grapes, avocados, beans, rice and a whole host of other “healthy” fruits, grains and vegetables can now contain higher pesticide residues. “At a time when cancers and other chronic diseases are on the rise, we should be doing everything we can to reduce our chemical exposure. In reality, we have no idea what this ongoing exposure to tens – or even hundreds – of different chemicals is doing to our health over the long-term”, says Nick Mole from PAN. And consider this: commercially available pesticides contain not only an active ingredient such as glyphosate, but also ‘adjuvants’. These are chemicals that make the pesticide ‘work’ better – like destroying the cell wall of a leaf so that glyphosate can get into the plant and kill it. Regulators only ask whether the active ingredient in a product is safe – but the question should be: how safe is the product farmers and growers apply? Glyphosate may possibly be ‘safe’, Roundup, which has glyphosate as the active ingredient, is not (according to the World Health Organisation’s cancer agency IARC).
It can’t happen here?
What about the EU, which over the years has banned a whole host of pesticides? A recent report by PAN Europe found:
“Hazardous pesticides banned in Europe are currently produced by European companies and exported to third countries, where safety regulations are generally weaker. The use of these toxic pesticides has devastating impacts on both human health and the environment, leading to widespread human rights violations. (…) Alarmingly, the report also demonstrates that some of these pesticides continue to be used within Europe despite their ban”.
Quite a few of the pesticides banned in the European Union can be used legally in the UK. Just over a year ago, PAN UK found that since Brexit, the (then Conservative) British government had permitted the use of no fewer than 36 pesticides that are banned in the EU. At the time, Nick Mole from PAN UK said: “The UK is becoming the toxic poster child of Europe. The government has repeatedly promised that our environmental standards won’t slip post-Brexit. And yet here we are, less than four years later, and already we’re seeing our standards fall far behind those of the EU. With UK bees and other pollinators in decline, and our waters never more polluted, now is the time to be taking steps to protect nature. Instead, the government is choosing to expose British wildlife to an ever-more toxic soup of chemicals.”
There are two things you can do to stay safe, not just during the apple season: grow your own, even if it’s just a pot on your windowsill (which is not easy, I’ve been trying for years), and buy organic. That is easy: without spending more than you would at a supermarket you can get an organic veg box delivered to your door and not just eat well but support organic growers, too.
Photo copyright: @M.Kunz
Marianne Landzettel is a journalist writing and blogging about food, farming and agricultural policies in the UK, the US, continental Europe and South Asia. She worked for the BBC World Service and German Public Radio for close to 30 years. Follow her on X at @M_Landzettel and m.landzettel on Instagram
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