§ Mr. Peter AinsworthTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what proportion of(a) vegetables, (b) fruit, (c) cereal products and (d) meat products available for consumption in the UK has been sampled for pesticide residues in the past 12 months. [7884]
§ Margaret Beckett[holding answer 15 October 2001]: In the calendar year 2000, 2,304 food samples were analysed for a wide range of pesticide residues under the Governments annual pesticide residues surveillance 544W programme. The programme generated results for about 90,000 pesticide/commodity food combinations. Specifically, 395 samples of fruit, 643 samples of vegetables, 71 samples of cereal/cereal products and 350 samples of animal products including meat were tested during 2000.
The majority of samples are collected at retail level and information is not available on the size of the consignment from which samples are collected. It is not therefore possible to calculate the proportion of total supplies sampled. As a result of the provision of additional funding by the Government and value for money improvements in the programme we are boosting the total number of samples collected for analysis to 4,000 during 2001.