Pesticides and the price paid for a healthy diet

SIR – It cannot be acceptable that the majority of the population, for basic financial reasons, has no alternative to a diet that is now said to be badly contaminated by pesticide and herbicide residues (report, November 21). This is not a matter of luxury foodstuffs but of the building blocks of a normal diet: onions, potatoes and wheat.

More information is urgently needed as to why the use of sprays of various kinds has rocketed so significantly over the past 50 years. While one can’t see, or probably much taste, these offending chemicals, most people have no choice but to go on eating them.

Rosalind J H Oliver

Bristol

SIR – Rather than worrying about chemical contamination, we should be celebrating the abundance of fresh, affordable fruit and vegetables in shops.

The organic food industry claims that consumers are being exposed to a “toxic cocktail” of pesticides. However, the chemical residues in question are at concentrations that are almost unimaginably low, being measured in parts per billion.

Organic farming itself uses pesticides that are frequently more toxic than those used by conventional farmers – the difference being that they are not man-made. If anything, bacterial and mycotoxin contamination poses a far more significant food safety concern than pesticides.

My advice to your readers is: don’t believe the scaremongers, and eat your greens – they’re good for you. David Bertioli

Southrop, Gloucestershire