Agroinnovations Podcast #55: The Shopper's Guide to Pesticides with Amy Rosenthal

[Agroinnovations]

Amy Rosenthal, of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), talks about the Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides. How it was created, the general break-down of how it can be used, what it covers and what it doesn’t and why, and we reflect about making food decisions to minimize exposure to harmful pesticide residues. The audio file can be found at:

http://tinyurl.com/kq645t

Continue the discussion here...

[Justin Ritchie]

I'm excited about the iPhone app but I'm a Google Android user, does Amy have plans to branch out to other platforms?

[Agroinnovations]

In an email from Amy Rosenthal:

At this point, we don't have any specific plans to expand into Google apps. Given the small size of our staff, we just don't have the capacity right now, but we're definitely thinking about it, and if we have an opportunity, we would definitely create more apps and for other browsers.

[David Hernick]

The Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides is appreciated & certainly helpful under econony constraints, however we also need to review the clean 15 with our own lenses, for example pineapple & mango have associated shipping impacts & conventional pineapples are generally grown in a system using of soil fumigants & extensive herbicide use, in rainy area that where erosion is a serious problem. all I am getting at is that there is more to the cleanness of food than just weather or not it has pesticide residues when you pick it up at the store.

On the topic of non-fruits or vegetables, I would like to comment about grains & nuts: "commodities" such as grain & some nuts, which are extensively stored and moved, have different sources of contamination. I learned about a practice called "fogging" in grain storage when i worked in organic certification, it is a practice where insecticides or fungicides are fogged into the air in a storage facility to deal with pest issues, organic inspectors are required to determine if the system in place at a storage facility maintains the integrity of the organic product, so "foggers" either need to be disabled or not exist in organic storage facilities.

[Agroinnovations]

Your assessment is right on, David, in that I think of the list as a stop-gap measure. It certainly isn't a "fix" for a terribly broken food system, but at least it's a bit of a guide based on data so that we aren't out there making purchases and eating blind. As I point out at the end of the podcast, we don't have standard deviation data for the produce on the list. While this may seem like statistical jargon, it's pretty clear with a little thought that the list gives us a simplified and incomplete picture. But, how to present something like that in a usable format on a business card sized list in a way that is accessible to most people? There's the challenge.

Justin, I asked Amy about an Android app. Will let you know if they have anything in the works. Good to see the forum here getting going.

[Carol B]

While I appreciate that some types of food are less likely to suffer from pesticide contamination, I do not buy organic food to avoid any pesticide residues on it. I don't want people to work in pesticide plants where they are exposed to pesticides, I don't want people (particularly farm workers) or animals or plants to be exposed to pesticides on application, and I don't want pesticides to get out into the environment where they can be added to the toxic load contaminating life on earth.

In other words, I don't want pesticides to be manufactured or used, full stop. The only way I can see to get this result is to refuse to buy non-organic food.

Oh, and I will mention that I didn't feel so strongly about this until I worked for the USEPA Pesticides Division (as an economist) in the late 80s and early 90s. Once I understood the system (or non-system) of pesticide regulation, buying organic was the only solution I could see.

Thanks for the program, Frank. I'm going through the archives now, listening to the older podcasts. Lots of good stuff in these podcasts. Thanks so much for doing them.