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Response to The Nelson Mail

Sir,

Your article (‘Elements of eating’, 13 Dec 2005) is a disappointing misrepresentation of the facts, particularly as your reporter was one of a number that recently spent a day with NZFSA’s experts in Wellington.

While the article did accurately present most of the data, the way it was presented was emotive and inaccurate and shows little understanding of the information. The Total Diet Survey measures levels of three categories of chemicals in food: agricultural compound residues, contaminant elements and nutrient elements. The latter two do not leave ‘residues’ because they are part of the chemical makeup of the food itself – not applied during production to achieve a food safety or quality outcome. Arsenic is a naturally occurring contaminant element and is thus not a ‘residue’.

While we agree that Seager Mason has a right to his opinion, and your paper has the right to report it, you also have a duty to present the facts accurately. Perhaps a better source of information on supposed and unproven links between DDT and certain cancers would have been one of the toxicologists from the National Poisons Centre, or even a check with the Cancer Society? Indeed, you will find on their website (www.cancernz.org.nz) a wealth of information and they state: “…pesticide residues in New Zealand are well within international standards and, therefore, considered safe and very unlikely to cause any adverse health effects.” To suggest otherwise could cause your readers harm if they decide to cut down on the amount of fresh fruit and vegetables they eat because of such unwarranted concerns.

Comments that NZFSA has selectively released the results of the Total Diet Survey, and is biased in how these results have been presented are, quite simply, not true. All of the information – including every quarterly report and all data as received by NZFSA from the Institute of Environmental and Scientific Research – has been available on the NZFSA website for up to a year. Right throughout the project, all of the information has been available to anybody, anywhere in the world.

The final report is a large and complex document, with more than 60,000 words of commentary and explanation, many hundreds of thousands of data, and dozens of tables, charts and graphs. Preparing this for publication is a massive undertaking and NZFSA is ensuring that the information presented is accurate. This involves checking what is presented in the document against the original data to ensure that every figure is correct, that the charts and graphs are accurate, and that the text is clear and correct.

It is odd that Mr Mason should state that “terms and measures like the maximum residue levels regularly quoted in this report are questionable and are only theory”. MRLs and all the other ‘terms and measures’ used by NZFSA are accepted by the international scientific community including the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and all of the world’s government food safety authorities.

NZFSA has no issue with your paper publishing opinion pieces, but to present these as news and mislead the people of Nelson is dishonest.

Andrew McKenzie

Executive Director