Food Standards Agency
Sunday 5 July 2009
Safer food better business banner
AZ-Directory
What's NewRSS
What is RSS?Listen
Listen to this siteFriday 12 March 2004
The Food Standards Agency funded a review of academic literature relating to the minimisation of pesticide residues in food, which was carried out by the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC). The report, which was completed in April 2003, reflects the views and opinions of the contractor, SAC.
The review was carried out to help the Agency develop an action plan to minimise pesticide residues in food.
It found that fungicides and growth regulators are the most commonly found residues and that post-harvest treatments lead to more residues than applications in the field. The levels of residues reported in the literature were not found to present a risk to people’s health.
At the moment, the use of pesticides in agriculture is decreasing, in the UK and the European Union (EU). The review looked at a number of options that should help to further reduce the amount of pesticides used and may reduce residues in food as a result. These include crop husbandry techniques, organic agriculture, plant breeding and changes in post-harvest pesticide use.
The report concluded that the following options are likely to have the greatest impact on reducing pesticide residues:
Download pdf
(pdf 499KB) (External) Get Adobe Acrobat reader You may need the free Acrobat Reader to view a pdfFind out what our other sites have to offer