New Zealand’s crops have shown positive results in health and food safety in this year’s Food Residue Surveillance Program.
The program, managed by New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA), analysed local and imported crops prone to exceeding the maximum residue limit (MRL) for agricultural chemicals.
While MRLs are used to determine whether growers have followed good agricultural practice (GAP), the NZFSA said they were not to be used as safety levels.
“It’s important to understand that a breach of an MRL indicates that good agricultural practice hasn’t been followed,” said NZFSA principal adviser for chemicals Paul Dansted.
“Exceeding the MRL doesn’t mean the food is unsafe.
“MRLs are set at a level that will ensure a person’s total exposure to that chemical will be within the acceptable daily intake.”
This year’s program focussed on bananas, bok choi, broccoli, cucumbers, grapes, nectarines, oranges and wheat.
Mr Dansted said the second round of results of the program, released yesterday, were similar to the results of round one.
There were no non-compliances detected in the samples of bananas, broccoli, grapes, nectarines and wheat.
However, bok choi again accounted for a large number of non-compliances with 11 instances of chemicals over the allowed MRL found in the 23 samples taken.
“We expected this might happen as samples for the two rounds were taken so close together that growers didn’t have time to change their practices based on our investigators’ visits and the information we have given them,” Mr Dansted said.
According to the NZFSA, MRLs were breached in the first round because growers were confused about how to classify bok choi. Many growers considered the vegetable a brassica, a plant belonging to the mustard family, rather than a leafy vegetable.
In other crops, the fungicide metalaxyl and the insecticide methamidophos were found in six samples of New Zealand cucumbers at non-compliant levels, and the herbicide pendimethalin was found in one sample of imported oranges at a non-compliant level.
The pesticide endosulfan, banned in NZ because of its environmental impact, was found in cucumber.
While only trace levels of endosulfan were detected, Mr Dansted said the Environmental Risk Management Authority and the Department of Labour would be investigating why the pesticide was present.