Ten Thousand New Reasons Not To Worry About Pesticide Residues

(Originally posted on Forbes 3/1/16)

Each year, the farmers around the world who produce our food (fruits, vegetables, grains) get the equivalent of a “grade” on a giant “group project.”   For 2014 they got another A+ as they have for many years.  The “test” entails thousands of food samples, which the USDA collects from normal US food channels and then scrutinizes for pesticide residues using extremely sensitive laboratory testing methods. They are checking for any detectable residues (41% of samples have none) and whether any of the detectable residues exceed the conservative “tolerances” set by the EPA (99.6% of the samples met that exacting standard). This means that our regulatory/farming system is working extremely well! Farmers are able to produce crops without the inefficiency and quality issues associated with excessive pest damage, and consumers are able to safely enjoy what they grow. The official conclusion from the USDA is “These Pesticide Data Program data show that, overall, pesticide residues found on foods tested are at levels below the tolerances established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and pose no safety concern.”

Chemical pesticides are only one part of the pest control regime, but an important one. The chemical pesticides in use today are predominantly low in mammalian toxicity, but for all pesticides the EPA sets detailed rules for how they can be used (e.g. maximum rates, periods of time before harvest…). These are designed to ensure that any residues that remain at the consumer level are below a “tolerance” based on a rigorous, multi-factorial risk assessment by the EPA. The tolerance is generally 100 times less than a dose that could cause any ill effect.  The allowed residues are also lower than the levels of natural pesticidal compounds that many crops make to defend themselves.

The 2014 USDA “test” is called the Pesticide Detection Program or PDP, and it has been conducted every year since 1991. For 2014 tests were done on 10,750 samples including 21 types of fruits or vegetables, two grains, two types of infant formula and salmon. The scientists detected a total of 22,890 specific pesticide residues of which 98.5% were below tolerance or at such low levels they couldn’t even be properly quantified (see table below).

I appreciate the fact that the USDA makes this data available and transparent. It allows us to see that not only are most of the residues below tolerance, a great many of them are more than 10, 100 or even 1,000 times lower than the tolerance (see column chart below - all to the left of the center bar are no-issue detections, but 84% are far below).

There are some minor differences between crops. In the two charts below, the light green bars show how many of the detections in a given crop were below tolerance, and the dark green bars show what percent were 10 or more times lower than the tolerance. The samples of infant formula had, happily, either no detections (dairy-based formula) or a few detections that were between 1000 and 5000 times lower than the very low tolerance (soy-base formula, 7 of 527 samples). Oats and rice also had few detections and those at very low levels.

Unfortunately, the very transparency which documents the safety of our food is grossly misused by an organic industry-supported organization called the Environmental Working Group. EWG conducts its own “analysis” of the data in which they completely ignore how the detections differ from one another and how they relate to the tolerances. Their choice to represent as “dirty” any residue, no matter how low or non-toxic, conveniently ignores the fact that similar pesticide residues are also regularly detected on the organic options that they promote. Hopefully they will refrain from such irresponsible fear-mongering this year.

So, at the risk of being like a parent who only focuses on an A- on a report card of all A+s, I looked in detail at the 1.5% of residues were of any potential concern. For the few detections that exceeded tolerance, most were only marginally higher and thus of very minor concern.  There were some residues detected for which there was not a tolerance for that specific crop, but in most of those cases the levels were lower than the tolerances for other crops.  The EPA also tests for some old, long-banned pesticides notorious for their environmental persistence. There were 18 detections of such materials, including three from organic samples.  Of those 18, 17 were at extremely low levels and only one was very significant (0.46ppm monocrotophos in a squash sample from Mexico).  All in all, I could only find 11 residue examples of moderate concern, which is an amazingly small number (0.045%).  I have posted a much more detailed analysis on Scribd.  If anyone is interested I'll be happy to email you that full summary.

So once again, the take-home message is that we have another 10,000+ reasons to confidentially enjoy our American food supply.  My congratulations to those who produce it for us.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Hate Speech For Profit: Organic Marketing Gone Bad

There is a new video about farming which is so nasty and misleading that I believe it qualifies as "hate speech" for financial gain.  Only Organic, a consortium of organic marketers, hired a professional ad agency to produce a YouTube video staging a fake elementary school performance about Old MacDonald vs New MacDonald - a critique of farming.  A primary spokesperson for "Only Organic",  Stonyfield Farm founder Gary Hirshberg, describes it this way:

“In a playful way, our new video turns the spotlight on the true costs of conventional farming and the harm it does to environmental health. We hope people find 'New MacDonald' as engaging and shareable as our previous content and that it furthers the conversation around why going organic is beneficial to our environment. A world with more organic food and farming is the future we should choose for ourselves and our children.”

Apparently Hirshberg considers it "playful" when:

"Soon after the curtain comes up, the scene descends into chaos as the children assume the role of conventional farmers - injecting livestock with antibiotics, dragging out caged chickens and spraying toxic chemicals on genetically modified crops - all of it culminating in a pesticide plume that envelops the stage," 

Sorry, Gary, but this depiction of mainstream farming is not "playful." You might also want to see this definition of propaganda. It is certainly not something that "furthers the conversation." It is a malicious distortion that demonizes the work of the small minority of citizens who still farm.  It is designed to make consumers believe they must buy organic food to be safe and responsible.  This is hate speech for profit!  The indoctrination of the child actors only makes it more despicable.

Only a tiny fraction of rich world citizens have any direct knowledge of, or interaction with farming.  Thus most people have no base of personal experience from which to assess the validity of the emotive images that are used in these manipulative campaigns.  Anyone who has actually spent time on farms and interacting with farmers knows that real farming is nothing like what is portrayed.

Not A New Phenomenon

Unfortunately this sort of over-the-top, negative marketing strategy is not new.    It follows the Scarecrow animated piece from Chipotle which is similarly manipulative. (see a good satiric take from Funny or Die).  Chipotle also put out a Hulu mini-series called "Farmed and Dangerous" complete with exploding cows and hyper-evil characters. Chipotle calls their examples of "hate speech for profit," "entertainment." They also claim that their company is about "food with integrity." Apparently not integrity that extends to their marketing activities.  Several years ago the Organic Trade Association sponsored a "Store Wars" video which wasn't quite as nasty, but still in the same basic genre.

Farmed and Dangerous from Chipotle

What is "playful" or "entertaining" about trying to frighten people into buying your products by unfairly demonizing someone else?

What If Organic Received This Sort of Treatment?

To put this in perspective, imagine if there was a comparable group to "Only Organic" from the "Conventional" side. They could hire an ad agency to produce a video and stills depicting fresh fruits, vegetables and other foods sitting in pools of fresh, steaming animal excrement or having the same coming out of a manure spreader onto a ripe crop of lettuce or strawberries.  They could call Organic, "Poop-based agriculture" and label their own products as "grown without the use of animal fecal matter."  That would, of course, be an unfair,  nasty depiction of the organic requirement to use only non-synthetic fertilizers. But if this fictitious group had the morals of "Only Organic" or Chipotle, they wouldn't hesitate to use that sort of emotive imagery. In contrast, when trying to counter the distorted "analysis" behind the Environmental Working Group's highly irresponsible "Dirty Dozen List", farming groups like the Alliance For Food and Farming take the high moral ground and tell consumers they can be confident in both the organic and conventional fruit and vegetable supply.

Consumers need to recognize when they are being manipulated for someone else's gain.

How should society respond to this sort of brazen, fear-for-profit behavior?  As consumers we should vote with our dollars by boycotting all the products from the companies behind "Only Organic," first and foremost Stonyfield Farms for its "leadership" role (see full list of companies at the end of this post).  We consumers need to recognize when we are being manipulated for someone else's gain.  Instead we can take confidence in the farmers who produce food that is remarkably safe and affordable.

I don't believe that these marketing strategies reflect the ethics of real organic farmers, certainly none that I've met. Someone made the excellent suggestion that organic farmers could start a "not in my name" campaign to say that they don't want to see the whole organic movement dragged down to this low level, and they don't want to see their neighbors and fellow farmers maligned.

The farming community lacks the vast resources available to these big organic food marketers and their NGO allies like EWG.  However, many farming community individuals are trying their best to get their side of the story out to the rest of society.  You can get their perspective on real agriculture by visiting these links:

What Farming Is

HawaiiFarmersDaughter

The Farmer's Life

Ask the Farmers

Nurse Loves Farmer

The Farmer's Daughter USA

The Foodie Farmer

Family Farmer.org

#farming365

Janice Person has posted a great list of farm blogs
as has Michele Payn-Knoper

A Suggested Boycott List of "Only Organic" Member Brands and Entities

Stonyfield,  Annie's Homegrown,  Orgain,  Naturpedic,  Happy Family,  Rudi's Organic Bakery,  Dr Bronner's Magic,  Organic Valley,  Uncle Matt's, Earthbound Farm,  AllergyKids,  Late July Organic Snacks,  Nature's Path,  National Cooperative Grocers Association,  Independent Natural Food Retailers Association,  Pete and Gerry's Organic Eggs,  Honest tea

Write these companies and tell them that you don't respect "Only Organic's" hate speech!

You are welcome to comment here and/or to write to me at savage.sd@gmail.com

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

How The USDA Unwittingly Aids EWG's Pesticide Disinformation Campaign

Each year, the Agricultural Marketing Service of the USDA (USDA-AMS) conducts an extensive sampling and analysis of items from the actual US food supply to determine what, if any, pesticide residues are present at the consumer level.  This information is published each year, and the actual raw data is also available for download.  The data for 2010 was just recently released.

What Does The Data Actually Tell Us?

For 2010, as for preceding years, the data demonstrates is that pesticide residues are only present at very low levels, usually dramatically below the conservative "tolerances" set during the risk analysis by the EPA.  This is quite remarkable considering that pesticide use on crops depends on many thousands of independent decisions by many thousands of individual farmers both in the US and in dozens of countries from which we import food.

This year the USDA provided several summaries in an effort to be clear about what they have found.  In this year's press release one finds the following, unambiguous statements:

The 2010 PDP report confirms that food does not pose a safety concern 

based upon pesticide residues.  

Statement from the EPA “The data confirms EPA’s success in phasing- out pesticides used in children’s food for safer pesticides and pest control techniques.  The very small amounts of pesticide residues found in the baby food samples were well below levels that are harmful to children.”  

Statement from FDA: "Based on the PDP data from this report, parents and 

caregivers can continue to feed infants their regular baby foods without being concerned about 

the possible presence of unlawful pesticide chemical residues." 

Statement from the USDA: "Age-old advice remains the same: eat more fruits and vegetables and wash them before you do so.  Health and nutrition experts encourage the consumption of fruits and vegetables in every meal as part of a healthy diet..."

Unambiguously positive assessments like this can also be found in the main data summary, the "What Consumers Should Know" highlights, and in the "Questions and Answers" link.

What Does The Press Tell Us?

As a typical example, CNN starts with the headline, "Watch out for the 2012 'Dirty Dozen," and continues, "Apples and celery are still agriculture's dirtiest pieces of produce according to the Environmental Working Groups annual "Dirty Dozen" report."  It's version of the baby food findings are, "For the first time this year, the USDA also collected data on pesticide residue in baby food, finding many of the studies samples to be contaminated with organophosphate pesticides."

How can CNN report something so radically different than what the USDA said?  They simply are repeating what the Environmental Working Group has said in its press release of 6/19 and make no effort to compare it with the official document.

HuffPost Healthy Living starts with the headline, "Dirty Dozen: EWG Reveals List of Pesticide-Heavy Fruits and Veggies."  Nowhere in this article is there even a reference to what the USDA, EPA and FDA said about the data.  It simply passes along the EWG interpretation as if it were gospel. 

This is the mainstream media.  You can well imagine what is said on various organic and Food Movement sites and blogs.

In contrast, Jon Hamilton writing for an NPR blog uses the headline, "Why you shouldn't panic about pesticide in produce."  Jon notes that the EWG sends a "mixed message," saying "you should be concerned about pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables, but not so concerned that you stop eating these foods."  Rather than simply parroting EWG, this writer demonstrates some journalistic mettle by interviewing a scientist at McGill University who can provide some perspective.  He also demonstrates that he read at least some of the USDA documentation by quoting specific numbers on apples and the non-alarm assessment for the baby food data.  Such efforts at balance are unfortunately rare.

Why Does The EWG's Version Get So Much Attention vs The USDA's?

Although sensationalism, low journalistic standards, and limited scientific background are certainly involved in the largely uncritical magnification of the EWG's message by the press (and particularly the blogosphere), I'm afraid that UDSA-AMS is partially to blame.  Don't get me wrong, they do a rigorous collection and analysis of the data.  They are extremely clear in what they conclude with sound reasoning.  They are definitely transparent and unbiased in their presentation.  What what USDA does not do is provide a summary version of the data that is easily digestible by ordinary readers, including typical members of the press.  EWG provides a simple list with a one dimensional ranking.  It is a gross and misleading simplification, but that makes it easy to relay as if it was a real analysis.  Unfortunately, the summaries that the USDA presents are extremely detailed, extremely long, and not easy to interpret even for someone who wants to.  Let me explain.

A Document That I Doubt Many People Really Read and Digest

The annual summary document for each year's PDP data is huge, in the range of 200 pages as a pdf (it is hard to tell, the appendices are numbered independently).  It starts with 28 pages of background on methodology and summary of sample types etc.  Then there are 9 pages of a historical appendix.  Finally the actual data begins in a 77 page appendix, but this is organized by chemical - nothing that most people would even begin to relate to.  For each chemical there is no information about whether that product is something toxic or not, nor is there information on any other dimension of its environmental profile.  To get that, someone would have to search for an MSDS and maybe an EPA RED - none of which are easy for any layman to interpret.  All this table lists are the number of samples, the number and percent of "detections,"  the range of those detections in PPM, the LOD (limit of detection), and the EPA tolerance (an extremely conservative level set by an elaborate risk analysis). Most people would have no idea what to do with those numbers.  In fact they show that the vast majority of "pesticide detections" are at levels well below the tolerances, but it is tedious to do the comparisons by eye and there is nothing in the table to give the message of how far below any level of concern the vast majority of samples are actually shown to be.  I'm not surprised that no independent journalistic interpretation of these data occur.

Below the chemical-by-chemical summary there are dozens of pages summarizing commodities other than fruits and vegetables.  That is followed by an appendix J which unhelpfully simply compares the "percent detections" for imported and domestic samples (a summary level as seriously unhelpful as that by the EWG).

Finally, at the very end of this huge document there is a crop-by-crop summary with the same data columns as for each chemical (#samples, #detections...) which has the same tedious requirement to compare detections and tolerance that are all usually numbers to several decimal points.  I have never seen anyone in the press do much if anything with this data set.

What Does This Report Need?

To be fair, USDA-AMS has amassed such a huge body of data.  It is difficult to summarize it in a way that is intuitively meaningful.  Their bottom line conclusion, "produce is safe," is a perfectly valid, but some visual representation could go a long way towards getting that message across.  I acknowledge that this is difficult.  I have made some attempts to do so in the past.  I plan to do so again with this year's data, but that will take time.  The same would be true for even an ambitious reporter, while simply reporting what the EWG says allows less ambitious reporters to keep up with the instant news cycle.

A Mountain of Data

It is a wonderful thing that the USDA makes the effort to analyze so many samples of so many crops and looks for so many different chemicals.  The downside is that this generates a database that is beyond what most of us even know how to process.  The file that one can download with the raw data has been getting bigger every year and has now reached 85MB.  I'm used to dealing with large files, but none of my ordinary software can deal this this.  I've gotten my son to write a program in RUBY to parse the data and only give me the tiny fraction which contains "detections" and discard the millions of rows of data that effectively say, "we didn't find this chemical in this sample."  I'm going to ask him to modify the program this year with some additional summaries.  

When and if I get this done, I plan to make this available to anyone interested in doing an actually meaningful analysis of the data and to explore ways to present it graphically in ways that can compete with the egregiously trivialized "analysis" done by EWG.  

You are welcome to comment here, and/or email me at savage.sd@gmail.com

Produce stand image from Steve Savage

reade more... Résuméabuiyad