Beans fed 11 kinds of pesticides, from field to table all the way green light
Green beans, eggplants, and cabbage are the most common vegetables on ordinary people's dining tables. Yet these vegetables, thriving under sunshine and rain, spend their "lifetime" together with pesticides: a single green bean is "fed" 11 kinds of pesticides, a single eggplant is sprayed with 4 kinds of pesticides mixed all at once, and vegetables just sprayed with pesticides are picked the very next day and shipped to market for sale.
After recently tracking part of the vegetable supply in Anhui from field to table, "Xinhua Viewpoint" reporters found that pesticide residue testing at all 3 distribution stages turned out to be all "green lights." As for vegetable pesticide residue testing, the authorities concerned responded that it is both "impossible to control" and "impossible to control fully."
1 green bean "fed" 11 kinds of pesticides; vegetable growers spray "by guesswork"
"Farming vegetables is not easy these days, you have to spray every few days, and basically there is no vegetable that isn't sprayed," said Wang Mingcheng, a 66-year-old vegetable grower in Hefei who was spraying his green beans. This month it has basically been one spray a day; without spraying, the vegetables would yield nothing.
Old Wang planted 3.5 mu of green beans, sowing from the beginning of April, and now they are about to go off the market. By the ditch pond not far away, the reporter carefully counted: he had sprayed a total of 11 kinds of pesticides in 3 major categories including insecticides, fungicides, and acaricides. Among them were 7 insecticides, such as dot-matrix cyfluthrin and Gongka lambda-cyhalothrin; 3 fungicides, such as Tianyuan Nongboshi dufulin and Zhongbao Kedubao moroxydine; and 1 acaricide, such as pyridaben.
Some vegetables are sprayed with pesticides once a day and harvested before the safety interval has passed. Zhang Tianbao, a vegetable grower from Lujiang, said bok choy has too many pests and diseases, especially in summer. The pesticide sellers say to spray every few days and to observe a safety interval, but when we see the bugs, how can we feel at ease? Basically it is one spray a day. "Sometimes we spray the same day and harvest the next day," he said with evident helplessness.
The dosage is also decided by the vegetable growers themselves. Dai Jixia, a vegetable grower in He County, said that in the past few days the leaves of her eggplants had pest damage. To save trouble, she mixed 4 pesticides given by the pesticide dealer, including bifenthrin and emamectin benzoate, and sprayed them all at once. "These days, isn't spraying all down to figuring it out yourself? Anyway, sooner or later it has to be sprayed, so might as well spray it all together and be done with it."
Off-label use of pesticides is nothing new to vegetable growers. Some growers said that on the packaging of every pesticide they buy, most of the registered crops are not the vegetables they grow. On the packaging of the pesticide Grandpa Wang had sprayed on his green beans, the reporter saw registered crops listed as tomato, tobacco, apple trees, and so on, while on the packaging of the pesticide Sister Dai had sprayed on her eggplants, the registered crops were cabbage, tomato, tea trees, and so on.
A vegetable grower surnamed Tang in Hefei said his green beans had bugs, and a pesticide dealer sold him Gongka lambda-cyhalothrin. After seeing that the packaging listed the registered crop as cotton, he asked the seller, and the seller said it could be used however he liked.
Spraying "by guesswork" is in fact a helpless choice for vegetable growers. "One spray costs about 40 yuan, and so far I have spent 1,500 yuan just on buying pesticides; the money from selling eggplants is not even enough to cover costs," Dai Jixia said. If there were no pests and diseases, who would want to spray? Now the pests and diseases are too severe; without spraying, the vegetables would lose yield or even run at a loss; and if someone gave guidance, who would still spray randomly? Isn't that just wasting money!
Pesticide residue testing all "green lights"; vegetable safety hard to guarantee
After eating vegetables sprayed "by guesswork," is safety guaranteed? The reporter tracked and investigated all the way from the vegetable fields of He County, Anhui Province, to the vegetable market in Ma'anshan City.
On August 2, the reporter went to vegetable grower Dai Jixia's eggplant field and learned that to deal with the pest damage, the previous day she had mixed 4 pesticides and sprayed them all at once, and harvested on the morning of the 3rd. Yet on the packaging of the bifenthrin she used, the reporter saw that the safety intervals for the registered crops tea tree and tomato were 7 days and 4 days respectively.
"Strictly speaking, applying pesticides not according to the registered crop is off-label use and carries certain safety risks," said Duan Jinsheng, director of the Pesticide Residue Testing Laboratory of the Institute of Plant Protection, Anhui Academy of Agricultural Sciences. At the same time, the safety interval of a pesticide refers to the period from the last application to harvest. If harvested within this period, it is unsafe.
So, for such an eggplant grown with off-label pesticide use and with no observance at all of the safety interval, would there be pesticide residue testing on the way from field to table? The reporter tried to find the answer by tracking the whole process.
First stage (vegetable grower -- producing-area wholesale market): At 4:30 a.m. on the 3rd, Dai Jixia and her husband went to the vegetable field to pick eggplants; at 7:45, they loaded several baskets of eggplants onto a tractor and hauled them to the nearby Buji Vegetable Wholesale Market, selling them to Boss Cao, a trader who runs routes to Ma'anshan. At this stage there was no pesticide residue testing!