Imported Produce--Pesticides Are the Major Culprit

The border inspector made his way quickly through the stacked boxes, picking up a bunch of bananas, a carton of strawberries, a cucumber, a green bell pepper. Awaiting his attentions were crates of plantains, radishes, turnips, cilantro, asparagus, mustard greens and lettuce, all unloaded onto the cargo bays from waiting vehicles.

“Beautiful,” the inspector said, working his way rapidly through the crates, on the lookout for signs of pests, disease or other abnormalities. “Muy bonito. “

So it goes each day at the Otay Mesa Cargo Processing Facility, the entry point for Mexican goods arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego.

The bustling activity along the border is a part of the huge traffic of Mexican produce that moves north every day.

While the sabotage of grapes recently focused attention on imports of Chilean products, it is Mexican fruit and vegetables that represent a much greater, and growing, chunk of the U.S. food consumption market.

In fact, Mexico is by far the largest foreign supplier of fresh produce to the United States, sending north more than $600 million worth, mostly vegetables, last fiscal year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Chile, which ranked a distant second, exported somewhat less than $300 million worth of produce, mostly fruit, to the United States during the same period.

Constant Concern

While sabotage, such as occurred with Chilean grapes, is a constant concern, activists worry about a more common 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.

Federal regulators insist that the pesticide residues in both imported and domestically produced foods are small. “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.

Of all imported foodstuffs sampled in 1987, the FDA says that 5.3% violated U.S. pesticide standards. However, that percentage is more than double the 2.6% of domestic food samples that were found to be in violation, according to FDA figures. (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.)

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.

1986 Study

A 1986 congressional study found that the FDA samples less than 1% of imported food shipments; that the agency was capable of detecting less than half of the estimated 600 pesticides available on the world market, and that many pesticide-tainted foods were ultimately sold to U.S. consumers because of delays 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. “You can’t absolutely guarantee safety in any case, said Gordon Scott, consumer affairs officer in the FDA’s Los Angeles regional office, which covers Southern California and Arizona. “You try to do a statistical round of sampling.”

Despite such concerns, the growing produce trade is a much-needed source of foreign revenue for debt-wracked Mexico--one that has been encouraged by Mexico City, with considerable success. The trend is upward.

Vast irrigated production areas, such as the San Quintin region south of Ensenada in Baja California, have been carved out of parched desert and semi-desert largely to serve the U.S. market. Other key producing regions for the U.S. trade include the northern states of Sonora, Tamaulipas and Sinaloa. Modern highways lead directly from the farms and packing sheds to the border.

U.S. Investors

Spurring the industry is the investment of many U.S.-based growers and international agribusiness concerns, drawn to Mexico by its proximity to the U.S. market, its cheap land, abundant sunshine, inexpensive labor and relative lack of regulations. Harsh working conditions and low pay for field hands, many of them Indians from the Mexican interior, have led to sporadic work stoppages and labor confrontations, but Mexican labor activists say their reform efforts have been stymied by the government’s alliance with big growers.

Most Mexican foodstuffs arrive via refrigerated trailer trucks at a dozen or so entry points along the 1,952-mile border, from Brownsville, Tex., on the Gulf Coast to San Diego on the Pacific.

The bulk of the Mexican produce consists of winter vegetables destined for the supermarkets and grocery stores of the West. Tomatoes are king among the Mexican produce, accounting for more than 25% of total fruit and vegetable imports, followed by cucumbers, onions and peppers; more than 50 varieties of fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs arrive from Mexico. Shipments of Mexican strawberries passing through Otay Mesa have grown from zero in 1983 to 26 million pounds last year.

Because of pests that could be harmful to U.S. fruit crops, notably the Mexican and Mediterranean fruit flies, many Mexican fruits, such as citrus products, generally cannot be legally exported across the border unless accompanied by special certificates from U.S.-employed inspectors in Mexico attesting that the produce is pest free. Authorities concede that only a small percentage of produce and other goods can actually be looked at; they rely on sample spot checks.

At the border, agricultural inspectors look for disease-bearing crops as FDA officials seek excessive pesticide residues. U.S. Customs Service personnel, sometimes employing drug-sniffing dogs amid the produce crates, attempt to ensure that duties are paid and no contraband is hidden amid the shipments.