Opinion: Improved Food Safety Requires Integration of Pest, Plant and Pesticide Interactions

In the real world, there is an interaction between pest, plant and pesticide that greatly affects the kinds and amounts of potentially toxic and allergenic chemicals that we eat. These interactions are virtually ignored in food safety regulation. Exposure to potentially toxic chemicals from crop foods comes from three principle sources: fungal toxin contamination, natural toxicants and allergens of the plant itself (‘self-defense’ chemistries), and from synthetic pesticide residues. To be effective, these ‘self-defense’ chemistries are often potent toxicants. When tested similarly to synthetic pesticides, plant self-defense chemistries are often toxic to genes, cause cancer, cause reproductive problems, cause birth defects, and the like. Our exposure to self-defense chemicals and allergenic proteins of plants is variable, and depends on growing conditions, which kind of crop, which variety of crop, selection for natural resistance to insects and fungi, the plant’s dynamic response to environmental stressors including insects and fungi, and possible mitigation of insect and fungal stress by use of synthetic or biotechnology pesticides, and post-harvest management. The ratio of self-defense chemistries to synthetic pesticides in our diets has been estimated at greater than 10,000 to 1 (Ames, 1983; Beier and Nigg, 2001). Almost the entire focus of society and regulatory agencies is to manage the 1 part in 10000. Obviously, this partitioning of resources is not scientifically rational. The plant world is interactive, and this dynamic must be managed to improve food safety.