Better Regulation of Pesticide Exports and Pesticide Residues in Imported Food Is Essential

American agricultural imports in fiscal year 1977 totaled over $13 billion making other countries' pesticide practices increasingly important because pesticide residues may be on these imports. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has identified neither the pesticide practices of nor all pesticides used in other countries. Such knowledge is essential if the agency is to make sure that food imports do not contain harmful residues of pesticides that have been suspended, canceled, or never registered in the United States. In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has neither informed other governments of pesticide suspensions, cancellations, and restrictions in the United States nor revoked tolerances for residues of these pesticides on imported foods.

EPA has not canceled over 297 tolerances for pesticides whose uses have been suspended and canceled up to 6 years ago due to adverse human or environmental effects. Continuing tolerance and/or action levels without adequate determinations as to safety and avoidability mislead and condone other countries' use of hazardous pesticides. Half of the imported food that FDA found to be adulterated during a 15-month period was marketed without penalty to importers and consumed by an unsuspecting American public. EPA needs to monitor these exported pesticides more vigorously not only to alert other governments of the dangers of specific products but also to provide information to FDA that would be useful in its imported food monitoring program.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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