Tag: pesticide data program

Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its annual Pesticide Data Program report to little fanfare or attention.

USDA Pesticide Data Program results show the majority of conventionally grown fruits and vegetables have residues so low, if present at all, they would meet the organic standard.

Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its Pesticide Data Program (PDP) report focused on 2022 sampling results and it’s more good news for consumers about the safety of fruits and vegetables.

The annual pesticide residue results are reported to the FDA and EPA in monthly reports as testing takes place throughout the year.

In Alliance for Food and Farming blogs over the last decade, this same sentence has been written repeatedly: “The newly released U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Pesticide Data Program (PDP) report found over 99% of all foods sampled had residues well below Environmental Protection Agency safety standards, if residues were present at all.”

USDA published the 2021 Pesticide Data Program (PDP) Annual Summary, which shows that more than 99 percent of the samples tested had pesticide residues below benchmark levels established by the Environmental Protection Agency

We learned about a new and disturbing statistic from a registered dietitian – 13 million children in the U.S. live in food insecure households. This means that those households don’t have enough food for every family member to lead a healthy life. And with inflation rising, that number could grow.

The USDA will host a webinar on March 15 at 10:00 a.m. PT, 1:00 p.m. ET to provide an overview of the current Pesticide Data Program (PDP) with highlights of the 2020 PDP results, as well as a retrospective of 30 years of PDP history and examine trends across the 30 years of data.

More than 99% of the fruits and vegetables and fruit juices tested for residues were well below rigorous safety standards established by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), if residues were present at all.

Over the 30 years, USDA has tested 126 commodities, including fresh and processed fruits and vegetables, dairy, meat, poultry, grains, fish, rice, specialty products and water. PDP monitoring results for more than 310,000 samples through the years are available on the Pesticide Data Program website.