For some consumers the reason for choosing organic produce is often related to the perceived purity of the product that - farmed without synthetic chemicals - is altogether healthier. What about wine?
Pesticide Action Network Report
Last year the Pesticide Action Network (P.A.N), a group that campaigns against the increasing use of pesticides in farming, released a report, in which 40 wines from across the world were independently tested for pesticide residues. The chemicals are thought to have got here through the applications of pesticides on the grapes throughout the growing year.
To maintain a fair sample the wines were taken from all price brackets covering supermarket shelf stackers to a £200 world famous Saint Estephe Cru Classe. Of the conventionally made wines, 100% contained pesticide residues. The average number of different residues per bottle was four, though one had as many as 10 different residues.
A total of 24 different chemical residues were identified in the bottles. Five of them were registered as either carcinogenic, reprotoxic, mutagenic or endocrine disrupting by the EU. As well as conventionally made wine, 6 of the 40 wines were from producers who practiced Organic farming methods. All but one of these organic wines showed no detectable pesticide residues present in the wine. The organic wine that did show a residue was thought to have been contaminated by pesticides carried in the wind from a next door vineyard.
Are Pesticides In Wine A Danger?
On careful analysis of this report the data does not seem so worrying. It's important to remember that the concentrations of the pesticides found were in the parts per billion level which is similar to one drop of water in an Olympic sized swimming pool.
The European Crop Protection Agency wase quick to reinforce the issue that the levels of residue “are not even close to any level of concern” with the Director General of the E.C.P.A, Dr. Friedhelm Schmider stating “drinking wine poses no health risk for European consumers with respect to pesticide residues”.
Today, with increased environmental awareness, pesticides are very much viewed as the bad guys in modern farming, yet most are fairly benign chemicals, specifically targeting the pest species they are aimed at. Jamie Goode of the “Wine Anorak”, comments on the misleading idea that all synthetic fungicides are hazardous, saying that “they're a relatively safe group of agrochemicals.” and “it is illogical to reject extremely useful, safe fungicides just because if you were to drink the stuff neat it would harm you.”
