"India: "One-third of New Delhi's organic veggies have pesticide residues"

Following up on its October investigation of data irregularities in the National Project on Organic Farming (NPOF), the Crop Care Federation of India (CCFI) stated on Tuesday that it had found pesticide residues in one-third of the organic products retailed in New Delhi that are marketed as chemical pesticide-free.

The owner of a retail store mentioned in the response by the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), to an RTI filed by CCFI, however, was unaware of the study conducted on its product but told Business Line that all its products had been organically certified by bodies recognised by the National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP). The CCFI communicated to BL that the Government itself conducted tests on organic vegetables and fruits and that it had filed the RTI to learn specific details about the results.

It is not clear in the IARI response as to how many organic retail outlets were tracked by CCFI, an association of pesticides manufacturers, besides ‘The Altitude Store’ from where 150 samples across a range of vegetables, including cauliflower, cabbage, brinjal, green pea and okra, were tested between January 2012 and October 2014.

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