Low Pesticide Residues on Fresh Produce

How safe is your fresh produce? We answer that question coming up on this land of ours.

Fresh fruits and vegetables and known for being healthy for us, but sometimes misinformation is put out about pesticide residue. One organization even claims to base its misinformation on a government study. So, advocates of healthy foods for American families went to work to gather the actual information from those studies. The Alliance for Food and Farming is one such organization.

“We asked them to look at the highest residue found on the commodities on the “dirty dozen” list, and assess them for their safety,” said Teresa Thorn of the Alliance for Food and Farming. “And what they found is that residues are so very low, if present at all, that a child could literally eat hundreds to thousands of servings of a fruit or vegetable in a day and still not have any health effects from residues. That’s how minute these residues are.”

She said in fact, the residue levels are so low that even most non-organic produce would qualify as organic based on the lack of pesticide residue.

Listen to Sabrina Halvorson’s This Land of Ours program here.

Sabrina Halvorson
National Correspondent / AgNet Media, Inc.

Sabrina Halvorson is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, and public speaker who specializes in agriculture. She is a native of California’s agriculture-rich Central Valley.

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