Pesticide residues in Estonian local and imported food in 2008–2011

Abstract

The use of synthetic pesticides is very common in conventional agriculture as plant protection measures and for improving storage of food. For increasing food safety, monitoring programmes are taking place in each European Union Member State and in Norway and Iceland every year. The monitoring aims to detect samples from food exceeding the maximum residue level (MRL) and provides data for an assessment of consumer exposure to pesticide residues. Results from Estonian national monitoring programme conducted by Veterinary and Food Board are presented in this paper, used to find out the differences in pesticide residue occurrences and MRL exceedances in local and imported food consumed in Estonia. In 2008, residues of one or more pesticides were found in 35–53% of the total analysed samples of fruits, vegetables and cereals. Imported food contained more pesticide residues compared to local food. MRLs were exceeded by 1.6% in 2008 and 2.3% in 2009 out of all samples, residues exceeding the MRLs were found in imported samples only. In 2010, 2.1% of total samples were above MRL. In 2011, 0.7% of total samples exceeded MRL which were of domestic origin. The highest MRL exceedances from the years 2008 to 2011 were propargite in beans with pods from Estonia over 10 times, chlormequat in grapes from India 7.9 times and trifluralin in tea from China 7.5 times. MRL was most frequently exceeded by dithiocarbamates, in 12 cases out of 22. The highest number of different pesticide residues in a single sample was 10 in apple from Belgium, 9 in mandarin from South Africa, 8 in strawberries from Spain and in apple from Poland. The results of monitoring programme show that local food contains less pesticide residues than imported food. By consuming food locally, it is possible to reduce the consumption of pesticide residues.