THE OFFICE OF TECHNOLOGY-ASSESSMENT REPORT ON PESTICIDE-RESIDUE METHODOLOGY FOR FOODS

In a recent national survey conducted by the Food Marketing Institute, approximately 75 percent of the consumers polled said that they were very concerned about pesticides in their food, a percentage that is higher than that of customers concerned about cholesterol, fats, salt, additives, or any other food component. However, recent evaluations of Federal pesticide monitoring programs have highlighted the gap between the number of pesticides that could potentially be found in food and the number of pesticides that can be routinely measured. Because of a continuing interest by Congress, they requested the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) to examine those analytical technologies and methods now available for measuring pesticides in foods, and to offer options on how Federal agencies, especially the FDA, could improve their analytical capability by adopting new technologies and making more effective use of existing ones. To this end, OTA held a workshop in March of 1988, dealing with these tasks, and issued a report to Congress, "Pesticide Residues in Food: Technologies for Detection", which is the subject of this paper (1).