Oct 21, 2021

FDA: Majority of food samples tested below pesticide tolerances

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued its annual Pesticide Residue Monitoring Program Report for the 2019 fiscal year. The results show the levels do not pose a concern for public health.

According to the FDA, the 2019 report demonstrates that the levels of pesticide chemical residues are generally below the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) tolerances.

The FDA tested for 812 pesticides and industrial chemicals across 4,692 total samples and found that the majority of samples had pesticide residues below the limits set by the EPA. These results are consistent with the trend of low levels of pesticide residue violations over the past 8 years.

Overall findings

In the 2019 fiscal year, the FDA tested 4,327 human food samples. The FDA found that 98.7 percent of the domestic and 89.1 percent of the 3,069 imported samples were in compliance with federal pesticide residue standards. The FDA also found no pesticide chemical residues at all in 42.4 percent of domestic and 49.4 percent of imported human food samples.

The FDA also tested 365 animal food samples and found that 98.4 percent of the 127 domestic and 95.4 percent of the 238 imported samples were in compliance. They also found no pesticide residues at all in 40.9 percent of the domestic and 43.7 percent of the imported animal food samples.

Focused sampling

The FDA analyzed 153 samples of domestic milk, shell eggs, honey and game meat for pesticides under the “Domestically Produced Animal-Derived Foods” sampling assignment. They found that none of the samples had a pesticide residue violations except for honey, which had 3 violative samples out of the 62 samples collected.

In all, 88.6 percent of the samples from this assignment group contained no residue.

The full report can be viewed here.