Food processing a tool to pesticide residue dissipation

Food safety is an area of growing worldwide concern on account of its direct bearing on human health. The presence of harmful pesticide residues in food has caused a great concern among the consumers. Hence, world over to tackle food safety issues, organic farming is being propagated. However, due to several reasons, diffusion and acceptance of this approach in developing countries has been very slow. Therefore, it is important in the transient phase that some pragmatic solution should be developed to tackle this situation of food safety. Food processing treatments such as washing, peeling, canning or cooking lead to a significant reduction of pesticide residues. In this background this paper reviews the common food processing operations along with the degree of residue removal in each process. The processes reviewed include: baking, bread making, dairy product manufacture, drying, thermal processing, fermentation, freezing, infusion, juicing, malting, milling, parboiling, peeling, peeling and cooking, storage, storage and milling, washing, washing and cooking, washing and drying, washing and peeling, washing peeling and juicing and wine making. Extensive literature review demonstrates that in most cases processing leads to large reductions in residue levels in the prepared food, particularly through washing, peeling and cooking operations.

Source: Food Research International (2009) vol. 42, p. 26-40