What's in our food?

From the Hallowe'en Moosletter:

It's that time of year again. Hallowe'en - season of incessant bangers; frightened pets, toddlers high on E numbers and a license for the local ASBO teens to set tyres alight and emit noxious fumes into the atmosphere. How we look forward it .

But wait, it's not just the environmental hazards and suspiciously coloured confectionary we need to be concerned about. Wanna hear something really scary? Even the "healthy" food we are giving our families is likely to contain a myriad of unwelcome extras like pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. Five a day is the recommended daily intake when it comes to fruit and vegetables but those of us that are following the advice of the experts may be in for a surprise. A 2005 report from the Department of Agriculture found that 56% of fruit and vegetables tested in this country contained pesticide residues and more than 5% exceeded the maximum residue limit or MRL. Iprodione, anyone? More thiabendazole perhaps? Care to sample a little carbendazim with your bedtime snack or can we tempt you to a little diphenylamine, chlorpyrifos, captan, malathion, cyprodinil... the list goes on.

It gets worse. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the United States, infants and children may be especially sensitive to health risks posed by pesticides. There are several reasons for this including the fact that their internal organs are still developing and maturing. Infants and children eat and drink MORE than adults in relation to their body weight which can have the effect of increasing their exposure to pesticides in food and in water. The EPA also points to the fact that children unlike (most) adults spend a lot of time lying on the ground and putting foreign objects into their mouths. And for the ultimate nightmare scenario, a child's development may be affected: According to the EPA website:

"Pesticides may harm a developing child by blocking the absorption of important food nutrients necessary for normal healthy growth. Another way pesticides may cause harm is if a child's excretory system is not fully developed, the body may not fully remove pesticides. There are "critical periods" in human development when exposure to a toxin can permanently alter the way an individual's biological system operates."

Spooked yet? We are told that acceptable levels of pesticide residues in our foods carry a hefty margin of error and there is no evidence to suggest that the traces of residue commonly found in our foods pose any risk to our health. But how confident can we be that what we are feeding ourselves and our families has no long term effects? Remember, organic food has been around for millennia. It's only in past 50 years that pesticides have been introduced into our agricultural system and many would argue that the lasting effects are unknown.

Investigate a little and there's no shortage of horror stories when it comes to pesticides in our fruit and vegetables, some of which are even linked to human rights abuses - read the frightening story in The Ecologist of Costa Rican agricultural labourers Alexander Zuñiga, Marco Borges and Jamie Juárez who were hospitalised after experiencing pesticide poisoning at the banana plantation where they worked. On their return to work, they challenged the plantation management and were summarily dismissed for 'misconduct'.

As consumers, we have the power to lobby for change. For starters, we can make our voices heard at an EU level by signing the online petition to demand the elimination of Europe's most toxic pesticides at http://www.pesticidewatch.eu. And at a local level, we can consciously choose organic produce and make a concerted effort to support organic agriculture. Consumer demand is driving the change from conventional farming methods to organic production and consumer demand is what may ultimately free us from this nightmare.

It's time to wake up and smell the iprodione ... and thiabendazole ... and carbendazim ...