What about pesticides in bread & ketchup?

HAVE YOU ever found a label telling you the level of pesticides contained in a bottle of tomato ketchup or even the daily packet of white bread? The food processing units and bakeries in and around the city, numbering over 500, have seldom bothered to find out the level of pesticidal residues in vegetables or fruits used as raw material in their manufacturing units, leave aside mentioning them on the product labels.

HAVE YOU ever found a label telling you the level of pesticides contained in a bottle of tomato ketchup or even the daily packet of white bread? 
The food processing units and bakeries in and around the city, numbering over 500, have seldom bothered to find out the level of pesticidal residues in vegetables or fruits used as raw material in their manufacturing units, leave aside mentioning them on the product labels.

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According to the Terrestrial Risk Indicators (TERI) project of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), about 20 per cent of the Indian food products contain pesticidal residues above tolerance level compared to 2 per cent globally.

A pesticide is defined as a substance or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling, or mitigating any pest. Often misunderstood to refer only to insecticides, the term pesticide applies equally to herbicides, fungicides, and various other substances used to control pests.

To top it all, the State Government in a recent note issued to the Department of Food Processing even suggested that the license offered to the food processors for a year under the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act 1976 should be made valid for “five years” so that they do not have to run around for renewing their license every year.

The Regional Food Analysis Centre under the Department of Horticulture has state-of-art testing facilities for pesticidal residues or any other contamination in food products. However, the number of smaller food processors who approach the laboratory for getting their products tested are far less in number compared to the size of testing infrastructure available at the laboratory, official sources informed.

“To our knowledge, the owners of  most food processing units in and around the city are aware of the fact that pesticidal residues could be remaining in the fruits and vegetables sourced by them from farmers but don’t verify if they are within permissible limits as defined under the Prevention of  Food and Adulteration Act, 1976”, said member of the Society for Pest Management & Environmental Protection V P Singh.

He said a commonly used pesticide in the farm sector is “Malthion” besides certain other category of pesticides whose maximum permissible limit is clearly defined by the Pest Control Act but seldom tested  for  pesticidal residues before the raw material goes for manufacturing processed food.

The various government agencies which are supposed to educate farmers on use of pesticides normally involve themselves with just selling the pesticides and never telling farmers what level of pesticides are considered safe for agricultural commodities, he said.

There are many restaurants in the state which stringently follow the quality norms for all the raw material. The same cannot be said of the food processing units in the state, Singh added.