The Dirty Dozen - Don’t be confused!
In December 2023 Pesticide Action Network (PAN) released its Dirty Dozen list for 2022 (the last year government data is available). This is a list of fruit and vegetables sold in the UK that are most likely to contain residues of 2 or more pesticides. There are a couple of things to note about this list:
PAN is reliant on data from the UK Government.
The UK government only tests about 3,000kg of produce each year which is a tiny fraction of the total produce sold, and they tend to test a different list of produce each year. This is an inconsistent approach to testing which makes it difficult to establish long term trends.
The Dirty Dozen (together with the percentage of samples with multiple residues) for 2022 are: