Pesticide Residue, Not Sabotage, of Greatest Concern to Activists

At a time when fears of adulterated food are much on the public mind, the huge volume of produce imports from Mexico is likely to draw additional attention. Although sabotage, such as occurred with Chilean grapes, is a constant concern--and one that regulators are hesitant to talk about--activists worried about imported produce are preoccupied by a more quotidian problem: pesticides.

In Mexico, as in the United States and other agricultural nations, pesticides are used extensively to destroy or control weeds, insects, fungi and other pests. Their application is credited with great gains in farm production. But many pesticides remain on fruits and vegetables and are ultimately ingested along with the food. Some have been shown to cause cancer or birth defects.

With pesticide applications subject to less monitoring in Mexico, and many other nations, than in the United States, congressional investigators and others have raised questions about inspection of Mexican and other foreign produce as it arrives at U. S. ports of entry.

“We have a completely inadequate monitoring system at the border,” said Jay Feldman, national coordinator for the National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides, a Washington-based consumer group. “The ability to detect commodities with unacceptable residues is very poor.”

(Ironically, Feldman notes that some pesticides banned in the United States but produced by U. S. manufacturers for foreign sales wind up back in the U. S. food chain through the food-import market.)

Federal regulators insist that the pesticide residues in both imported and domestically produced foods are small and relatively harmless. “We’ve monitored this for years, and we’ve found that the intake of pesticide residue is well below the acceptable daily intake,” said Emil Corwin, a spokesman in Washington for the U. S. Food and Drug Administration.

The FDA is charged with ensuring that pesticide residues on imported and domestic foods do not exceed U. S. standards. FDA inspectors also check that the produce does not contain substances largely or completely banned in the United States--such as the pesticide DDT--and that the foodstuffs are not marred by pesticides not applied in accordance with U. S. guidelines. Officials accomplish the task by inspecting produce and labels visually, physically and by laboratory tests on assorted samples; almost 8,000 such samples were taken from imported foodstuffs in 1987.

With truckload after truckload of produce arriving at the U. S.-Mexico border daily--about 1.5 million metric tons annually, more than 3 billion pounds--finding pesticides on a given head of lettuce can be a daunting task. Many believe the agency is overwhelmed.

FDA officials readily acknowledge that they are short-staffed at the border and elsewhere. A 1986 congressional study found that only one agency inspector was generally on duty at the border port of Nogales, Ariz.--the largest entry point for Mexican fruits and vegetables, where about 1.6 billion pounds of produce arrived in the most recent fiscal year. No inspector was found on duty in Nogales on Fridays and Saturdays.

The FDA says it has two inspectors assigned full time to the port at Otay Mesa in San Diego.

Usually there are two on duty in San Diego, according to the FDA.

“Sure, we’ve always said we could use more money and more staff,” said Corwin, the FDA spokesman.

But a shortage of personnel was only one of a range of shortcomings unveiled by the 1986 congressional investigation, which was conducted by the U. S. General Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative arm. The inquiry looked at the issue of pesticides in imported foods. Among its findings:

*The FDA annually samples less than 1% of imported food shipments. Some commodities with few violations, such as tomatoes, are sampled heavily, while samples of other foods are taken relatively infrequently.

*The FDA’s lab techniques are capable of detecting less than half the estimated 600 pesticides available on world markets.

*Many pesticide-tainted foods were ultimately sold to U. S. consumers because of delays in obtaining lab results and in pulling the produce off the market.

FDA officials say they have worked hard to rectify some of the shortcomings identified by the inquiry, bolstering staff and improving inspection and lab techniques, among other things.

“We feel we’ve done an awful lot in the last couple of years to make this a safer matter,” said Gordon Scott, consumer affairs officer in the FDA’s Los Angeles regional office, which covers Southern California and Arizona. “You can’t absolutely guarantee safety in any case. You try to do a statistical round of sampling.”

Federal regulators note that only a small volume--about 5.3%--of the imported foodstuffs sampled in 1987 violated U. S. pesticide standards. That percentage is more than double the 2.6% of domestic food samples that were found to be in violation, according to FDA figures.