A pesticide banned over health concerns was detected during routine tests on fruit and vegetables in Malta, a new report has found.
The report, published by the EU’s food safety agency, says that insecticide chlorpyrifos was detected during scientific tests on a number of fruit and vegetables grown and sold in the country in 2019.
At the time the samples were taken, there was a ban on chlorpyrifos products over concerns that it posed neurodevelopment impairment in foetuses and children.
The insecticide has been used in agriculture in Malta since 1966 on a wide range of fresh fruit and vegetables.
In 2019, an EU study had concluded that the threshold at which chlorpyrifos becomes toxic cannot be determined. Soon afterwards, the government had announced it was banned from use.
Malcolm Borg, who heads the farmers’ lobby group, Għaqda Bdiewa Attivi, said the ban on chlorpyrifos had only just come into force when the tests were conducted. This, he noted, meant farmers would have likely been trying to use up a stock of the chemical they had invested in when the tests were done.
The European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) report also says that legal action was taken against an unspecified group of Maltese farmers after they failed routine pesticide screening for a number of different insecticides.
According to the national summary on Malta, some 200 samples from 20 different food types, both locally produced and imported, were tested.
These included 12 apples, 10 types of baby food, three samples of barley grain, 12 cabbages, 12 grapes, 12 lettuces and so on.
The food samples found to contain the banned pesticide were all identified as locally produced.
The national pesticide monitoring programme is meant to ensure compliance with maximum residue levels of the chemicals allowed across the European Union.
More than 500 pesticides tested
More than 500 pesticides were tested for in fruit, vegetables and other products available in Malta. Just over half of the products tested were identified as being of Maltese origin while 42% were imported, the bulk of which came from within the European Union.
Most of the produce tested in the country passed, with 91% given the all-clear.
Of these, 38% contained no pesticide residue whatsoever while more than half were positive for pesticides but only in amounts well below the maximum allowed in the EU.
The food safety agency said that nine per cent of samples (20 items) contained pesticide residues above the maximum level allowed at law.
In a separate breakdown of results, EFSA said the products failing the test were two samples of local cabbages, six batches of spinach, three samples of strawberries, two samples of tomatoes and five samples of potatoes.
In the case of oranges and beans, just one sample of each failed the test as all the samples with residue levels above the legal maximum were of local origin apart from the beans, which were imported.
In an opinion of why produce had failed the test, EFSA pointed to “good agricultural practice not being respected”.
The report said the application rate – how much pesticide can legally be sprayed – was not always being respected.
In Malta, many farmers apply pesticide manually. This practice can pose the risk of overexposure on produce when compared to the more precise application methods employed in large-scale industrial farming often seen in larger European Union states.
Comparing the 2019 figures with past results, the EFSA said there had been an increase in the number of samples with residue levels below the acceptable maximum when compared to the previous two years.
The percentage of samples above the maximum threshold in 2019 was nine per cent as compared to four per cent in 2018 and three per cent in 2017.