jamie goode's wine blog

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Pesticides in wine: a problem?

The recent press release (here) by Pesticide Action Network (PAN) makes for rather alarming reading. Titled Message in a bottle, it reports the results of tests on 40 bottles of wine purchased within the European Union. ‘European wines systematically contaminated with pesticide residues’, is the conclusion. The report comments: ‘Together the 34 bottles of conventional wine contained 148 pesticide residues. All 34 bottles contained at least one pesticide, while the mean number of pesticides per bottle was more than four. The highest number of residues found in a single bottle was 10.’ Does this mean wine drinkers are in danger, and that there is a systematic failure by regulatory bodies to do the appropriate monitoring?
Anxious to get to the bottom of all this, I did a bit of research on the pesticides involved and the concentrations that were found in the wine... read more on this

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