Crop Life America Applauds USDA Report That Reaffirms Food Safety in the U.S.

Dec 31, 2014

Pesticide residues detected on a variety of recently sampled food products are below the tolerances established by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and “do not pose a safety concern,” according to data released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS). The 2013 Pesticide Data Program (PDP) Annual Summary, officially released on Dec. 19, 2014, shows that over 99 percent of the products sampled through PDP had residues below the EPA tolerances.

Crop Life America Applauds USDA Report that Reaffirms Food Safety in the U.S.
The PDP collected 9,990 food samples for testing in 2013 including fresh and processed fruits and vegetables, infant formula, butter and salmon. Of that total only .23 percent were found to have residue levels exceeding the allowed tolerance. Pesticide residue tolerances, or limits, are set at levels 100 to 1,000 times lower than what is considered potentially dangerous for human health.

“The PDP Annual Summary reaffirms the effectiveness of our government’s regulatory system,” said Jay Vroom, president and CEO of CropLife America (CLA). “CLA commends the program for continuing to publish clear, scientific information on the safety of our food that is grown both domestically and imported.”

“When paired with responsible use, crop protection technology provides many benefits while still helping to feed your family,” added Vroom. “According to a socio economic report completed by CLA in 2011, agricultural exports support $141 billion in U.S. trade balances annually with the help of crop protection products. The use of herbicides in support of conservation tillage also saves more than 550 million gallons of fuel each year, significantly reducing the carbon footprint of today's agricultural industry.” Click here for that report from CLA.

Joining USDA in a statement on 2013 summary results, EPA commented: “The newest data from the PDP confirms that pesticide residues in food do not pose a safety concern for Americans. EPA remains committed to a rigorous, science-based, and transparent regulatory program for pesticides that continues to protect people’s health and the environment.”

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Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.