Pesticides: Need to Enhance FDA's (Food and Drug Administration's) Ability to Protect the Public from Illegal Residues.
Abstract
Pesticides are used extensively in American agriculture and residues of these pesticides on food need to be closely monitored to protect the public from harmful effects. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for monitoring the domestic food supply to identify food with illegal residues and to remove it fom the market. Illegal pesticide residues are those that are not allowed to be present on food or are present in greater concentrations than those authorized by the Environmental Protection Agency. Such food is adulterated and cannot legally be marketed in interstate commerce. GAO examined FDA's (1) monitoring (sampling and testing) of the nation's domestic food supply for illegal pesticide residues and (2) efforts to prevent food containing illegal pesticide residues from reaching the market. FDA has concluded that it cannot monitor all food that might contain illegal pesticide residues. FDA has designed its monitoring program to act as a deterrent by selectively spot-checking a very small amount (probably less than 1 percent) of domestically produced food for illegal pesticide residues and to remove such food that it finds to contain such residues. FDA's pesticide monitoring program has two major shortcomings: FDA does not regularly test food for a large number of pesticides that can be used or may be present in food. FDA does not (1) prevent the marketing of most of the food that it finds to contain illegal pesticide residues and (2) penalize growers who market food with illegal pesticide residues when FDA is unable to remove it from the market.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 1986
- Accession Number
- ADA175943
Entities
Organizations
- United States Government Accountability Office