Posted on 1-8-2004

What's On The Menu?
01.08.2004, By GEOFF CUMMING, NZ Herald

Wander into most supermarkets for fruit and vegetables these days and
you're confronted with a choice: should you pick the organically grown
produce you're told is better for you or the conventional,
pesticide-treated variety?

Most of us continue to buy on price - bypassing those ugly-looking
"natural" oranges and cabbages for their shiny, chemically enhanced mates.

Those with nagging doubts take comfort in surveys giving conventional food
a clean bill of health.

Only last month, the Food Safety Authority released the findings of a
pilot surveillance programme, declaring: "New Zealand's food supply is
among the very lowest in [chemical] residue prevalence in the world."

Executive director Andrew McKenzie said our food supply was exemplary.
This month, its Total Diet Survey, covering the third quarter of last
year, found no chemical residue concerns in the average diet.

The authority even congratulated the industry, and its own surveillance
programmes, for supporting "New Zealand's safe food reputation".

But within days, it was in a tailspin over lead contamination up to 100
times the permitted level in cornflour milled from imported corn. The
contamination was identified in baby custard during tests for the Total
Diet Survey for the fourth quarter. A week later it was sourced to
cornflour from imported corn milled in Auckland last October.

Recalls of Robinson's Step Up Egg Custard and cornflour sold under the
Pams, Gilmours and Edmonds labels were of limited benefit: the products
had been in supermarkets since late last year. And the cornflour found its
way into 30 other foods - none of which the authority will name, saying it
was diluted to harmless levels.

The agency gave assurances that only long-term exposure to high levels of
lead threatened human health and this was most unlikely to occur with
cornflour.

But the scare was grist to the mill for pro-organics campaigners already
gunning for the authority over its approach to food safety in general, and
pesticide residues in particular.

Green MP Sue Kedgley has missed no opportunity to take the authority to
task. She was dumbfounded by authority assurances that the contamination
posed no threat to consumers.

"Lead accumulates in the body and can cause irreversible damage to the
nervous system and the brain," she said.

"Children are especially sensitive to even low levels of lead poisoning.
How can we have confidence in a regulatory agency that appears so blase
about such a serious breach of food safety?"

Kedgley's attack gained street cred when parents aired fears for children
who ate a lot of contaminated product - such as "fussy" 14-month-old
Connor Brock-Smith, who ate Robinson's egg custard morning, noon and
night, and a Hastings girl with a glycogen storage disease who needed corn
starch every four hours.

Kedgley called for an inquiry into why the contaminated cornflour was
allowed to enter the food supply and the authority's handling of the
issue. She asked why such staples as corn were not routinely tested for
heavy metal and pesticide contamination.

To pro-organic groups such as the Greens, the Soil and Health Association
and the Safe Food Campaign, the incident is potentially the tip of the
iceberg. Citing scientific uncertainty about safe minimums for various
pesticides and fungicides, they want the authority to be more active in
reducing chemical residues.

They also want routine testing of imported produce and country-of-origin
labelling so consumers are better informed.

The authority's dual role - protecting public health and easing access to
markets for New Zealand foods - and close ties with the Ministries of
Agriculture and Fisheries leave it open to accusations that it is an
apologist for the food industry.

Certainly, the authority was pleased to trumpet the third-quarter Total
Diet Survey, which found no chemical residue concerns in the average diet.
>From more than 45,000 samples, it found only "three minor issues where
results were slightly above the maximum residue level (MRL)".

Those issues were the fungicide ethoxyquin in chicken nuggets and two
pesticides in celery and capsicum, which were not registered for use with
those crops.

"In each case, there is no health or safety concern," said survey manager
Cherie Flynn.

Within days, Soil and Health and the Greens issued starkly different
interpretations of the survey. The Greens said 24 of 25 fruit and
vegetables sampled were contaminated with residues.

"Many of them contained a veritable cocktail of pesticide residues - 13 in
grapes, nine in apples, seven in celery and six in nectarines. Kiwifruit
contained traces of the fungicide vinclozolin - a deregistered product
that is known to reduce sperm count, affect the prostate and delay puberty
in test animals."

Soil and Health said "gender bender" fungicides iprodione and
dithiocarbamates, suspected of disrupting hormonal development and causing
cancer, were found in 17 of the fruit and vegetables. It released its own
"independent" analysis of grapes, raisins and sultanas which found "up to
27 different pesticides" in 22 samples.

The polar-opposite interpretations of the survey are easy enough to
explain. To the pro-organic lobby, any residue equals contamination.

The authority is concerned only if the amount exceeds the MRL, which it
says is set many times lower than the recommended safe daily intake. But
that's where the clarity ends in a debate that has become increasingly
hostile.

The combined assault on the survey followed a withering attack on the
authority by Kedgley at a select committee hearing last month.

A day after Soil and Health spoke of "gender bending pesticides in grapes
and raisins," exasperated authority executive director Andrew McKenzie
released "the truth about residues in New Zealand food", a point-by-point
rebuttal of lobby group statements.

Claims of contamination in fruit and vegetables, he said, were
"misleading, inaccurate and demonstrate a poor understanding of good
agricultural practice, economic reality, environmental concern and
science". He accused the groups of and creating unnecessary consumer
concern about the safety of fresh fruit and vegetables.

There was no evidence, said McKenzie, that organic food was any safer than
conventionally produced food.

For good measure, he blocked the groups from using the authority's regular
consumer forum to press their case for lowering pesticide levels.

All of which leaves consumers none the wiser on the big question: are
chemical residues safe? The authority is in no doubt.

"We know, and all the international evidence tells us, that New Zealand
food is extremely safe," said spokeswoman Sandra Daly.

But the pro-organics lobby continues to doubt. Alison White, co-convener
of the Safe Food Campaign, said New Zealand and Australian regulators
assumed a little bit of a carcinogen (cancer-causing substance) wouldn't
kill us. But other authorities, including the United States Environmental
Protection Agency, assumed no such threshold for carcinogens.

Tests on mice have failed to establish a threshold for carcinogens, she said.

White, a teacher with a diploma in public health, is completing a masters
degree at Victoria University School of Medicine on pesticides after
investigating the subject for 15 years. "The more I find out, the more I
have to be concerned about."

With other campaigners, she cited the vulnerability of young children and
babies in the womb to carcinogens and mutagens. Depending on the nature of
the chemical, the timing of exposure and other variables, exposure could
have irreversible effects.

But it's impossible to prove, for instance, that exposure to a given
amount of carcinogen will cause cancer in 30 or 40 years.

If that leaves room for uncertainty, she has accused McKenzie of being
unscientific in his claims.

"The FSA comes out with this soothing syrup saying 'everything in the
garden's rosy - go back to sleep'. We don't think that's good enough. We
need improvement so residues are lowered."

Finding experts without an axe to grind on chemical residues is not easy.
Ray Winger, professor of food technology at Massey University, said the
safe limits were extremely conservative "so any residues left are safe for
human consumption".

Winger, a former board member of Food Standards Australia New Zealand,
said humans and animals could cope with low levels of most toxins.

"But there are plenty of examples of problems that have occurred after
science has said they are safe. The arguments on both sides of the debate
are hard to refute."

Dietetics Association executive officer Carole Gibb said the safety limits
were set against a backdrop of worldwide practice. "I'm very confident in
the New Zealand food supply and the recall procedures - I think we are
seeing the benefit of that process."

That's not good enough for Kedgley, who wants the authority made
independent of MAF and dedicated to consumer safety, rather than its
present "schizophrenic" mandate.

She said the lead contamination scare undermined the agency's credibility
- it delayed going public and should have issued a precautionary recall of
all contaminated products.

Tim Knox, the authority's director of domestic and imported food, stands
by the agency's response.

"The survey has shown our food supply is safe - it's a positive result
from that point of view," he said. "It's unacceptable to have this level
of lead in the food supply. As soon as we were aware of that we acted."

Knox said domestic producers must meet best practice manufacturing
standards and routinely test for product safety. The authority randomly
tested imported foods but corn was not seen as a risk.

He acknowledged the scare had exposed gaps in safety assurance for
imported foods. But the authority recently launched a pilot programme to
test for residues in imports and yesterday announced a review of its
entire imported food testing regime.

"But no system is going to give a 100 per cent guarantee. This is an
unusual event. We will be looking for the lessons we can learn from it."