#Kingston, July 22, 2019 – Jamaica – The Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) is assuring consumers that local foods are safe for consumption and are produced in keeping with international pesticide standards.
Principal
Director for Technical Services at RADA, Marina Young, said the training programmes
and surveys conducted by the agency, and its ongoing collaboration with various
stakeholders, have ensured the continued proper use of pesticides by persons in
the agriculture sector.
“Many farmers in Jamaica have good agricultural practices. They have been exposed to training and they understand the risk of pesticides. In our 2016 survey of farmers’ knowledge, skills and attitudes [towards] chemicals, it was seen that the majority of the farming population are aware of and practicing the international standards,” she pointed out.
Mrs.
Young was speaking at a Think Tank held on Friday (July 19) at the JIS
headquarters in Kingston. She noted that
farmers have shown extensive knowledge of pre-harvesting interval (PHI), which
is the amount of time that must elapse after pesticide application before the
crop is reaped.
Mrs
Young said that RADA’s collaboration with Government agencies has proved
critical in ensuring that the majority of pesticide products registered in
Jamaica are in the lower toxicity classes.
“The Ministry of Health, through the Pesticides Control Authority (PCA) and the Pesticides Review Committee (PRC), has made tremendous efforts for the last decade to review and make a decision on withdrawing the highly toxic chemicals. We have withdrawn most of the class one and class 1A pesticides from the market,” she pointed out.
Based on
the World Health Organization (WHO) Hazard Classification, there are four
classes of pesticides (classes I to IV), with class IV being the least toxic.
Chairman
of the PRC, Dr. Dwight Robinson, in his remarks said scientific information
gathered by the entity has shown that the pesticide residue on local produce is
at safe levels.
“In the figures from the last monitoring survey in May, we found that 11 per cent of the produce had any form of pesticide residue. Of that 11 per cent, none of them had levels that were above the maximum residue limit that is allowed by international standards,” he explained.
Dr.
Robinson noted that the crops that showed the most frequent evidence of
pesticide residue were cabbage, callaloo, pak choi and thyme.
“Those
crops have a pest complex and you will find that where farmers adhere to the PHI,
you will find that the residues will fall even lower,” he added.
Meanwhile,
Mrs. Young is encouraging persons to learn more about pesticide products
registered in Jamaica.
“They can
visit the website at www.caribpesticides.net, where you have all of the pesticides databases
for agricultural and non-agricultural usage,” she said.
Contact: Rosheika Grant
Release: JIS