It's amazing!
The same day the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) hid data on compliance rates for egg grading in Ontario, it issued a news release to trumpet compliance rates for pesticide and chemical residues in foods.
Incidentally, the results put the lie to organic-movement leaders who claim their food is safer because they don't - or aren't supposed to - use pesticides.
The CFIA released two studies
that found more than 99 per cent of a wide variety of food samples tested met
Health Canada standards for chemical residues.
The CFIA routinely tests various food products
for specific hazards to determine whether they pose a potential health risk to
consumers. If a human health risk is found, a public recall notice is issued
immediately.
A 2009-2010 study on pesticide residues in fresh
fruit and vegetables found that 99.6 per cent of fresh fruit and vegetables
tested met Health Canada standards for pesticide residues.
This study was funded under the Government of
Canada Food and Consumer Safety Action Plan announced in 2007.
The CFIA collected 3,078 samples of apples, small
berries, leafy greens and tomatoes and analyzed them for more than 400
different pesticide residues.
All of the apple products met Health Canada
standards, despite being a crop that usually is more heavily sprayed than most
Canadian crops.
The survey found 99.5 per cent compliance for
small berries, 98.5 per cent for leafy greens and 99.6 per cent for tomatoes.
In another CFIA study conducted in 2008-2009
under the National Chemical Residue Monitoring Program (NCRMP), the overall
compliance rate for a variety of chemical residues topped 99 per cent which is
similar to the results from previous years.
Based on these results, I'd say the risk to health is less from pesticide and chemical residues than are eggs because, apparently according to electronic data under court protection, up to five per cent of Grade A eggs in Ontario might be cracked or dirty.
Obviously dirty wash water could seep in through the cracks. And who wants shit on eggshells?
