What role do plant protection products (pesticides) play in food?
What are pesticides and how do they get into food?
Pesticides are active substances and combinations of substances that contain one or more active ingredients. Pesticides protect plants and plant products from pests and diseases in the field as well as during production, storage and transport.
These include, among others, herbicides (→ weeds), fungicides (→ fungi), insecticides (→ insects), acaricides (→ mites), nematicides (→ nematodes), molluscicides (→ slugs/snails), growth regulators, repellents, rodenticides (→ rodents) and biocides (→ products for controlling pests and disease vectors such as insects, rats and mice).
Pesticides can enter food via treated plants already in the field and through treatment with storage-protectant agents during subsequent production.
What legal regulations exist?
Regulation (EC) No 396/2005 on maximum residue levels of pesticides in or on food and feed of plant and animal origin (Pesticide Regulation) sets maximum levels — available via the EU pesticides database: https://food.ec.europa.eu/plants/pesticides/eu-pesticides-database_en .
Maximum levels generally refer to fresh, unprocessed raw commodities. For processed foods, appropriate processing factors (e.g. drying factors) must be taken into account. For highly processed products or foods composed of several ingredients, a final legal assessment is not possible.
Regulation (EU) 2018/848 on organic production contains further rules for organic foods.
In Germany, the BNN orientation value for pesticides is also used to assess organic foods (BNN: Federal Association of Natural Food and Natural Products).
Analytics:
Pesticide screening is performed using a combined method of LC-MS/MS, GC-MS/MS and GC-NCI.
Polar pesticides, e.g. glyphosate/AMPA, chlormequat/mepiquat, chlorate/perchlorate, are analyzed using individual methods.
Pesticides can also enter food (including organic foods) from the environment (via soil, irrigation, air, etc.).
Sources:
- BNN (Federal Association of Natural Food and Natural Products) on the orientation value for pesticides; available at: www.n-bnn.de
- BfR (Federal Institute for Risk Assessment) on the classification of plant protection products; available at: www.bfr.bund.de