From benbrook@hillnet.com Thu Mar 11 01:11:09 1999 Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 13:02:37 -0800 From: Charles Benbrook To: sanet-mg@amani.ces.ncsu.edu Subject: Pesticides in the Diet Sanet -- There has been a flurry of activity on the FQPA, pesticides in food front since the release last Thursday of the Consumer Reports article "How Safe is our produce?" (March issue), and the accompanying 71 page CU technical report "Do You Know What You're Eating?". The technical report is accessible at the CU FQPA website at , and contains a detailed analysis of the distribution of pesticide residues in foods, including a comparison of residues on imported versus domestic produce. Some of our findings challenge conventional wisdom and have triggered the wrath of the American Crop Protection Association, the Farm Bureau, and other defenders of the pesticide/pest management status quo. CNN's website featured the release of "How Safe is Our produce?" as its lead story for most of the day 2/18, and a broadcast report appeared four or more times. Their website included links to the technical report on the CU FQPA site. As a result of this link and many other broadcast reports, we had just over 18,000 hits that day, with over 9,000 accesses to the 71 page technical report in about 12 hours! The ability of the web to move large amounts of information quickly and inexpensively is amazing. Predictably, the debate is underway on our findings, methods and data. We are committed to responding to mis-information and unscientific attacks on the report. If you run across items on the report in your local papers or various list-servers, please e-mail them to me personally at or fax them to 208-263-7342. If anyone wants more information on the issues and CU's response to various critics/critiques, please e-mail me directly. Also, the Environmental Working Group ran a full page advertisement today Monday) on the back page of the business section of the New York Times on Alar -- 10 Years After, and current levels of pesticides in/on apples. They have launched a new feature on their Foodnews website called "Apple a Day." Its accessible at and basically draws upon USDA Pesticide Data Program to show the pesticide residues a person would consume if they followed the advice to eat "an apple a day" for a year. This site will also trigger strong responses, no doubt. Hopefully these very data-intensive materials and resources will be useful to those of you working with consumers and/or to change the country's approach to pest management and pesticide regulation. They also will be a test of whether grower groups and the ag community, in general, is really interested in data- and science-based implementation of the FQPA. Some groups (like the AFB) will not be able to resist the temptation to shoot the messenger, but the data remain and as the public learns more about it, the pressure will grow to remove the relatively few high-risk pesticides from foods heavily consumed by children. chuck Charles Benbrook 208-263-5236 (voice) Benbrook Consulting Services 208-263-7342 (fax) 5085 Upper Pack River Road benbrook@hillnet.com [e-mail] Sandpoint, Idaho 83864 http://www.pmac.net To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail