Pesticide residue analysis: is it as important as it used to be?

Despo Louca Christodoulou: I’ll be bold and say it’s even more important than it used to be. To ensure the quality of the products – and maintain high productivity and remain competitive – more and more pesticides are used nowadays. The fact that pesticides may also harm humans has not gone away, so, of course, it is still necessary to ensure that residues are not present at levels that may cause risk to human health. Laboratories must be able to analyze an appropriate number of pesticides in food, meaning that we must apply both multi-residue and single residue methods. To do that, laboratories must be equipped with appropriate and increasingly sophisticated instrumentation whilst continually expanding their skills. Methods must have the appropriate sensitivity to satisfy all EU regulations. Put simply, I believe pesticide residue analysis is still a hot topic.

Magnus Jezussek: I think it’s certainly as important as it used to be, but the media plays a bigger role now than ever before (for better and for worse). For example, we are likely to have controversial discussions about glyphosate – a hot topic in the media at least – questioning whether or not we should ban its use. All discussions about pesticide residue analysis tend to focus on consumers’ concerns – and we are here to ensure that we focus on the real risks.

Sonja Masselter: I can highlight the importance with some figures. For example, if you look at the 2010 Eurobarometer survey, the results say that 31 percent of European citizens are concerned about pesticides in food. The perception of the consumers may be subjective – as Magnus notes with the discussion about toxicity of glyphosates – and the media certainly influences public perceptions of these hazards to a large degree. For the same reason, neonicotinoids in relation to bee mortality is also a very hot topic – and one we must be fully aware of. From 2015 until January 2016, the number of Rapid Alert System for Feed and Food (RASFF) notifications for pesticide residues was 422. 312 of these notifications concerned border rejections. Since the harmonization of maximum residue limits (MRLs) – Regulation (EC) No 396/2005 – we’ve observed a decrease of noncompliant samples in Austria.