If you were lucky enough to grow up in a garden which had apple or pear trees (and this might be some time ago) how often did your parents spray them? Perhaps never. And were the apples as nicely shaped and blotchless as those you now buy in the supermarket? Almost certainly not. And you might even have bitten into one of your own crop and found a wriggling maggot - or worse, half a maggot. That doesn't happen with the densely packed supermarket ones nor does the latter carry the odd scab on the skin. Isn't it better to get the perfectly-shaped, unblotched supermarket apple?
It is and it isn't. Most of them are without flavour, but are easy for the grocer to handle. And we don't know yet what effect all the spraying may have, long-term rather than short, on the human body. Recently in the Sunday Telegraph we were told that, in Britain, at any rate, the apple is the most intensively sprayed crop. Part of an EU monitoring programme revealed that residues were found in 90 per cent of British samples. After harvest most apples and large numbers of pears receive a pre-storage fungicide treatment: a dip or a drench. Cox's apples, it is said, receive up to 24 treatments.
Does it matter? Isn't great care being taken to see that the fruit arrives to you in the best possible condition? Again in Britain, strawberries are sprayed an average of nine times. Methyl bromide, described in the article, here as a major ozone-depleter, scheduled to be phased out in Europe in the year 2005 (and already banned in several countries), is currently used extensively in Britain. Sources of all this are the MAFF (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) monitors in Britain, 1995 and 1996, and Pesticide Usage Survey reports.
Does it matter? Is there reason for anxiety? Well, would the Ministry not dissuade or forbid so much spraying if it thought it did serious harm? And, anyway, can't you buy organically-grown food for your children and yourselves if you have fears? Or can you? Organic food for all is a long way off - if it ever comes back universally. And this, much as organic growers deserve to be helped governmentally and supported by purchasers. It may be said that all this treatment makes food cheaper for all, because so many of the products reach us in good shape and don't succumb to disease and financial loss on the way.
Or is there a great snag out there, which it may take a generation or two more to make itself known, to reveal itself in the human body. This is the pessimist view.
There must be another - please. On another day we'll have spraying in Ireland. Y