AG questions Horticorp’s claim of safe vegetables

Pesticide level of vegetables may be higer than permissible limit

‘Safe-to-eat vegetables’ sold by the Kerala State Horticultural Development Corporation (Horticorp) may not be as safe as the company’s promotional flyer claims.

The Accountants General, Kerala, has told the government that the pesticide level of vegetables sold through Horticorp outlets labelled thus may be much above the legally permissible limit.

In September this year, the AG’s auditors had partnered with food safety inspectors to randomly gauge the pesticide residue in common place vegetables such as cucumber and green chilli sold through Horticorp outlets. The results sent by the AG to the Agriculture Department recently showed a shockingly high content of toxic chemicals (acephate, profenophos and thiamethoxam) that are incrementally detrimental to public health when consumed over a sustained period.

The auditors found that the vegetables were procured from middlemen and not from farmers as the company claimed. They termed the sale of farm produce of questionable quality through the statutory corporation’s outlets as “an attempt to deceive the public”. The AG also found that the Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) adopted in principle by the government to prevent the indiscriminate use of chemicals and fertilizers were “yet to be implemented”.

Importantly, the AG found lapses in the settlement of vegetable purchase bills. “The purchases were made from one person and payment made to another,” the auditors told the government. Competent authorities rarely authorised payment vouchers. Stock registers and purchases details were not properly maintained. The possibility of accounting procurement based on bogus bills could not be ruled out.

In at least one case, Horticorp had recorded the names of the supplier and the amount paid to them. But its managers did not mention the quantity procured or the name of vegetables bought.

Horticorp draws huge subsidies from the government annually to ostensibly stabilise vegetable prices during festival seasons. Some such dubious transactions are already under Vigilance scrutiny.

Principal Secretary, Agriculture, Raju Narayanaswamy told The Hindu that the government was aware that vegetables cultivated using pesticides were often mislabelled and sold as organic produce at high rates. The government will ban pesticide companies from demonstrating their products in farms, he said.

He said Horticrop would soon retail only farm produce sourced from government-backed 14 agro parks to come up in Kerala soon. For instance, the proposed one in Thrissur would farm organic honey, Kozhikode and Ernakulam pesticide-free coconuts and paddy. Farms in Idukki and Palakkad would focus on organic cultivation of vegetables.

The company’s stalls would display GAP-approved vegetables and those sourced from the open market separately.