A consumer doesn’t ask much of a punnet of strawberries. They can turn it over for mould, inspect it fastidiously, perhaps reject a bruised one, then entrust everything else to a chain of growers, auditors, regulators and retailers they will never meet. Pesticide Action Australia decided to inspect that chain.
In June, the not-for-profit organisation bought 78 fruit and vegetable samples from Aldi, Coles and Woolworths across five cities and sent them to a laboratory accredited by NATA, Australia’s primary independent accreditation body. The lab found 201 pesticide residues from 54 chemicals with 44 per cent of samples containing residues of pesticides classified by the report as PFAS, or ‘forever’ pesticides.
Bupirimate on strawberries reached 9.5 times the maximum residue limit (MRL), while bifenthrin on grapes hit 5.5 times. Fipronil and permethrin were also detected on capsicum where Pesticide Action Australia said no APVMA MRL, label or permit could be found. The findings on their own, however, do not explain how the residues came to be there nor establish that any unlawful use occurred.
APVMA itself stresses that an MRL is a compliance tool, rather than a health or safety threshold. The pesticide itself may follow a comprehensible path from farm to shelf, but the responsibility is less straightforward.
From growers to retailers to the APVMA and food regulators, everyone in that chain has a part to play, which makes it hard to work out who is answerable when a residue exceeds a limit or a chemical may have been used incorrectly.
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