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Food News


THIS SECTION IS FOR NEWS AND INTERESTING STORIES RELATED TO FOOD, NUTRITION AND FOOD PROCESSING. THEY ARE NOT NECESSARILY RELATED TO KOSHER BUT MAY BE OF INTEREST TO THE KOSHER CONSUMER, MANUFACTURER OR MASHGIACH.

USDA report shows more than half of foods tested have pesticide residues

December 17, 2019 from Food Safety News and :

"The mystery Nebraska State Sen. Carol Blood created briefly Tuesday by withdrawing her bill to limit the use of the term “meat” on product labels in the state was short-lived."

"While more than half of the foods tested had pesticide residues, less than 1 percent of the commodities covered by the USDA’s Pesticide Data Program had levels above legal limits."

"The annual report from the Agricultural Marketing Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture covers testing for 2018 and was released this month. The numbers vary little from those in recent years."

"'Over 99 percent of the products sampled through PDP (Pesticide Data Program had residues below the Environmental Protection Agency tolerances,' according to the report summary."

"'For the 10,545 samples analyzed, 47.8 percent of the samples had no detectable pesticides, 21.0 percent had one pesticide, and 31.2 percent of the samples had more than one pesticide.'”

"The yearly round of testing samples a wide variety of domestic and imported foods, with a strong focus on foods that are consumed by infants and children. "

"Staff from the PDP work with state agencies representing all census regions of the country and approximately half of the U.S. population. In 2018, food samples were collected and analyzed in California, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Washington."

"In 2018, a total of 704 samples with 909 pesticides were reported to the FDA as Presumptive Tolerance Violations, according to the USDA pesticide report."

"Of those 82 samples, 39 were reported as imported produce. One asparagus sample and one snap pea sample contained two pesticides each that exceeded the established tolerances."

"In addition, 642 samples were found to have pesticides for which no tolerance was established, including 444 fresh fruit and vegetable samples, 151 processed fruit/vegetable samples, 30 rice samples, and 17 wheat flour samples."

"An industry group, the Alliance for Food and Farming, heralded the report as an all clear for consumers to eat as many fresh fruits and vegetables as possible."

"A consumer watchdog organization called the Environmental Working Group annually issues its own interpretation of the USDA’s pesticide report after the first of the year, historically. Its annual campaign against the so-called Dirty Dozen fresh produce commodities is based on the pesticide residue report and has spurred an annual debate with the farming alliance."

The previous item can be cited with the URL: https://www.kashrut.com/News/?alert=W974

The information posted is from secondary sources. We cannot take responsibility for the accuracy of the information.
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