The liberal use of pesticides may increase crop yields and give us cheaper vegetables - but they come at a price in terms of damage to our health and the environment. It's just one of the reasons that Friends of the Earth is campaigning for Real Food - food you can trust. It's food free from genetically modified ingredients and toxic residues. Food from real farms, not factories. Food that safeguards wildlife, livelihoods - and you.
Real food is produced without using the toxic pesticides that remain in our food.
Progressively reducing dependence on pesticides will help protect human health and the environment. Intensification in crop production means using large quantities of pesticides. There are more than 300 chemicals approved for use on crops in the UK, and farmers spray around one billion gallons of them each year on 95 per cent of the UK's crops. Cox's apples grown in the UK, for example, get an average of 35 pesticide treatments before arriving at the supermarket. Pesticides are applied at all stages of a crop's lifespan.