Greenhouse horticulture in the Netherlands: ‘PAN Netherlands careless about residue’
Pesticide Action Network Netherlands (PAN Nederland) has acted carelessly when analyzing residue measurement data from the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA), according to Glastuinbouw Nederland and GroentenFruit Huis.
PAN Netherlands has added all NVWA analyzes of fruit and vegetable products together and divided by the number of times that a residue equal to above 0.01 was measured. ‘In the combined dataset, there are too few samples per product, per year per to be able to stat the results and what PAN Nederland does’, write the two organizations.
PAN Netherlands concluded last week in an analysis that the number of residues on Dutch potatoes, vegetables and fruit has started a Dutch trend over the past seven years. PAN Netherlands also ignores the fact that climatic conditions, plant disease pressure at the beginning of the end of the season and the soil differ, both within one country of species and between production regions, Greenhouse Horticulture Netherlands and GroentenFruit Huis.
Furthermore, PAN Nederland does not provide legal standards for application, the Maximum Residue Limit (MRL), and food safety.