Source: FDA, 10/20/21


The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued its annual Pesticide Residue Monitoring Program Report for FY 2019. We tested for 812 pesticides and industrial chemicals across 4,692 total samples and the majority of samples had pesticide residues below the limits (known as “tolerances”) set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). These results are consistent with the trend of low levels of pesticide residue violations over the past 8 years.

Growers often use pesticides to protect their crops from insects, weeds, fungi, and other pests. To protect public health, the EPA sets tolerances on the amounts of pesticides, known as pesticide chemical residues, that may remain in or on some foods. The FDA’s role is to ensure that pesticide chemical residues in or on foods comply with the EPA tolerances. We consider a food to be in violation of federal standards when it has pesticide chemical residues above the EPA tolerance, residues of pesticides that have no EPA tolerance, or residues of pesticides that do not have a tolerance exemption for that specific pesticide/commodity combination.

Overall Findings
In FY 2019, we tested 4,327 human food samples. We found that 98.7% of the 1,258 domestic and 89.1% of the 3,069 imported samples were in compliance with federal pesticide residue standards. We also found no pesticide chemical residues in 42.4% of domestic and 49.4% of imported human food samples.

Similarly, we tested 365 animal food samples. We found that 98.4% of the 127 domestic and 95.4% of the 238 imported samples were in compliance. We also found no pesticide chemical residues in 40.9% of the domestic and 43.7% of the imported animal food samples.

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