Pesticide controls and testing inadequate for all farmers
Wednesday, 18 April 2001 10:00
The feature in today's Sydney Morning Herald comes as no surprise to environmental campaigners. However, contamination of workers and our food supply by pesticides is not only limited to farmers from non English-speaking backgrounds.
"To assume that food in NSW is free of harmful pesticide residues based on only 300 samples is laughable," claimed Mark Oakwood, Chemicals Campaigner at the Total Environment Centre.
"NSW consumers are expected to believe that our food is free of harmful levels of pesticide residues based on an even smaller so-called 'representative' sample."
"To make the situation even worse, there are many loopholes that escape the feeble survey attempts of government. The big supermarket chains do their own testing, but do not release the results, and small growers can sell their produce direct to local grocers, without any testing whatsoever."
"The NSW government is clearly more concerned with maintaining the illusion of "clean and green" produce, without really doing anything to reduce chemical use on farms which threatens human and environmental health. Unacceptable levels of pesticide residues in the past have always been discovered by overseas importers of our produce. It seems they care more about the quality of our food than we do."
"Ironically, the Australian and New Zealand Food Authority (ANZFA) released its food residue testing results today as well. While they claim that there is no cause for concern, ANZFA failed to test human breast milk for pesticides as they have in every previous set of tests. Considering that DDT levels have been increasing in human breast milk in every set of results to date, it must be easier for ANZFA to claim no problems if they do not go looking for them," continued Oakwood.
"ANZFA also only tests a tiny fraction of all the food reaching our tables, and suffers from the same loopholes as the NSW system. If the reports of pesticide abuse by small farmers are true, then there is a significant and real chance of contaminated food reaching the tables, without any real effort by state or federal authorities to deal with the problem."
"Possible health effects from constant low-level pesticide exposure range from reproductive and developmental effects, nervous system damage, immune system impairment, through to a wide range of cancers."
"The only truly "clean and green" produce is that grown by certified organic growers, which is annually inspected and tested for pesticide traces. ANY pesticide traces found results in the loss of their certified organic status."
