Parma: The overwhelming majority of food sold across the Union carries pesticide residues that sit safely within legal limits, the European Food Safety Authority confirmed in its annual review, even as campaigners argue that the safe-versus-legal distinction hides a more complicated picture.
The authority, based in this northern Italian city, sifts tens of thousands of samples that national laboratories collect each year from the fruit, vegetables, cereals and processed goods on European tables. Its latest report covers the 2024 harvest, and the headline number is reassuring: the vast bulk of samples contained pesticide residues at or below the maximum levels the law permits, and a large share carried no measurable trace at all.
Those maximum levels are not plucked from thin air. Regulators set each one well below the dose that could plausibly harm a consumer, then test whether the food on sale respects it. When a sample breaches the limit, national authorities can pull the product, trace its origin and press the grower or importer to explain, and the report feeds directly into where inspectors look next.
The review does more than count breaches. Every few years the authority runs a coordinated programme that tests the same basket of everyday foods across every member state, which lets it compare countries fairly and spot substances that turn up more often than expected. Apples, tomatoes, wine grapes and wheat feature regularly, precisely because Europeans eat so much of them.
Imported food draws closer attention. Produce grown outside the Union breaches European limits more often than home-grown crops, partly because other countries allow pesticides that Europe has banned. That gap fuels a long-running argument between farmers, who say cheaper imports held to looser standards undercut them, and traders who warn against turning food safety into a barrier to commerce.
Consumer and environmental groups accept the compliance numbers but question the framing. Testing judges one pesticide at a time, they note, while a single strawberry may carry traces of several at once, and the science on how such mixtures act together is still thin. The authority acknowledges the point and has been building methods to weigh the combined exposure rather than each chemical in isolation.
For shoppers, the practical advice has not changed. The health benefits of eating fruit and vegetables far outweigh the residue risk, the authority stresses, and a rinse under the tap removes much of what remains on the skin. The report is meant to reassure without inviting complacency.
The full dataset, searchable by food and by country, sits on the authority’s pesticides pages. Read together, it tells a steady story: Europe’s food is, by the measures regulators use, overwhelmingly within the rules, while the debate over where those rules should sit rolls on.
