Group says label scared consumers away from produce

By MITCH LIES

Capital Press

A farm advocacy group last week aired findings of a scientific panel challenging an environmental group's contention that pesticide residues on some fruits and vegetables pose health risks to consumers.

The Alliance for Food and Farming, based in Watsonville, Calif., said the Environmental Working Group's "dirty dozen" list of fruits and vegetables "is misleading to consumers and an impediment to public health because it discourages consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables."

Teresa Thorne of the alliance said 17 percent of consumers in one study said they have reduced or stopped purchasing certain items because of concerns about pesticide residues.

"There was growing concern this list was improperly maligning fruits and vegetables and the farmers who work so hard to produce them," Thorne said.

The panel of five scientists said in its report: "The panel does not agree with (the Environmental Working Group's) assertion that there is a growing consensus among scientists that the amount of pesticide residues currently found on food constitutes a significant public health issue."

The panel also found that the Environmental Protection Agency's process for evaluating the potential risks of pesticides on food is "rigorous, and health-protective."

"There are no studies that specifically link pesticide residues in the diet with health effects," the panel said.

The panel also debunked the EWG's claim that organically grown food is nutritionally superior to conventionally grown crops.

"There is no convincing reason to believe that any one production method is consistently superior in regard to nutrition," the panel wrote.

Thorne said the alliance hired to panel to study the issue "to help convey to consumers that they should be eating more fruits and vegetables, whether grown conventionally or organically, and that both are very, very safe."

The panel consisted of a University of California-Davis nutrition professor, a pharmacology professor at the Kansas University Medical Center, a toxicology professor at the University of Michigan, an occupational medicine professor at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and a former official with the EPA.

The Environmental Working Group, which first aired the dirty dozen list in 2007, responded by thanking the alliance for resurrecting it.

"We are delighted and grateful to chemical farming interests for this new effort to heighten consumer awareness about pesticides that routinely contaminate most conventionally grown fruits and vegetables," said EWG President Ken Cook in a prepared statement.

Cook's statement was contained in a release headlined "Shut up and eat your pesticides."