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Lettuces 'Dressed With Illegal Level Of Pesticides'

Every time you eat a "healthy" green salad you could be ingesting a coktail of chemicals, according to a new report today.

Researchers claim that more pesticides are applied to the humble lettuce than any other vegetable crop, with an average 11.7 applications in a year.

London-based environmental consumer group Sustain found that the UK came bottom of a European league table with the worst record per capita of any country for the testing of pesticide residues.

The study, using the Government's own data plus information from the food industry, will be officially published in full next month.

Researchers found the testing of nitrate residues in lettuces by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Maff) in 1998 was poorly planned and few samples were used, despite the large number of lettuces that can be found to regularly exceed EC legal limits.

Testing of the vegetable was arbitrary and often done on fewer occasions to save money, says the report.

It reveals that in one study by Maff the amount of pesticides applied per hectare had increased by 600 per cent between 1984 and 1994. Alexis Vaughan, who is publishing the research in a booklet Salad Days, said: "The lettuce is rather delicate and vulnerable to disease so apparently needs a lot of chemicals to keep it bug-free."

"We found, for example, that testing of pesticides residues of UK-produced lettuce by Maff has been reduced from 70 samples in 1995 to 21 samples in 1998. For imported lettuces, the situation is even worse - there were 22 samples taken in 1995 and just 2 samples last year."

Spanish lettuce have proved cheaper for UK consumers, but their production is detrimental to Spain's environment, says the report.

In Murcia, an area which produces one-third of all Spanish lettuces, an estimated tonne of nitrogen is applied to every hectare, compared to the recommended 200 kg, so that around 375 kg leaches into the environment.

"It is all so unnecessary,' Mr Vaughan added. "This vegetable is very easy to grow in large quantities organically. There are now various biological systems where natural predators like ladybirds can be used to feed off aphids that ruin the lettuce."