CropLife Canada responds to media coverage of pesticides in Quebec
Quebec consumers are fortunate to have access to a wide range of fruits and vegetables, and have confidence that they are safe to eat and feed to our families. While pesticides tend to be a headline-grabbing topic, what’s often missing from the story is important context.
Pesticides are an important tool farmers sometimes use to protect their crops from insects, weeds and diseases. Without them, there would be a lot less locally grown food available for Quebec consumers. Canada has one of most rigorous scientific evaluation processes for pesticides in the world. More than 300 scientists at Health Canada review new pesticide applications and re-evaluate existing products. Health Canada’s top priority is protecting the health and safety of Canadians and it will not approve a product that may pose a risk to human health.
Stories such as the one that recently ran in Le Droit about increases in Maximum Residue Limits (MRLs) for pesticides can understandably raise questions for consumers without the appropriate context.
MRLs are not a safety standard, and this is where the confusion often lies. MRLs are set 100 times or more below the level at which there could possibly have an impact on human health, even over a lifetime of consumption. MRLs help enable trade and are designed to verify that farmers are using pesticides as they are intended. They are an important part of our interconnected global trading system that facilitates food traveling around the world – including into and out of Quebec. While MRLs can change over time for various reasons, what remains the same is that any MRL, or change to it, must be well below the safety limit.
When we are talking about MRLs these are trace amounts of residue measured in the parts per million or parts per billion. This is where some context helps. Say your chances of winning the lottery were one in a million and then you increased your odds by 100 times. That sounds like a big number but your likelihood of winning is still only 0.0001. Consumers can rest assured that any trace amounts of pesticides that may remain on their food does not pose a risk to their health and safety. Moreover, regular testing from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency shows that 90 % of Canadian fruits and vegetables contain no trace of pesticides at all.
Glyphosate is one particular pesticide that gets a lot of attention and is unfortunately the subject of a great deal of misinformation. The reality is that it is one of the safest and most effective herbicides ever developed. There is more than 40 years’ worth of data to demonstrate the safety of glyphosate and no major regulatory authority in the world considers it to be a health risk when used according to label directions.
Health Canada, whose mandate is to protect the health and safety of Canadians, stands firmly behind the safety of glyphosate. It stated that it ‘left no stone unturned’ in looking at the science behind glyphosate and found no health or safety concerns associated with the use of glyphosate as directed.
Quebecers, who are being pressed by rising food costs, can and should have confidence that the food they are buying is safe for them and their families. It’s critical that consumers be provided with all the relevant context to participate in such discussions and so they can make decisions based on facts rather than fear.
Émilie Bergeron,
Vice president, chemistry, CropLife Canada