Scammers are having a moment. On this episode of Biotech Facts and Fallacies, plant scientist Steve Savage tackles scams within the agriculture and food realm, including a pesky scam that occurs each year around this time—Environmental Working Group's 'Dirt Dozen' list.

It seems like the world has an ongoing fascination with scammers. Whether it’s tuning into the dueling documentaries about Fyre Festival, the luxury music festival that never was, or the podcast called The Dropout about Elizabeth Holmes’ fraudulent claims about her blood-testing technology and doomed company Theranos, people are captivated by a scheme and con men (and women). Perhaps it’s reveling in the “takedown” of the grifter and vindication of the scammed, or perhaps we enjoy marveling at the sheer audacity of a doomed, and oftentimes, misguided effort. It’s going to take longer than this podcast to get to the root of love of a scam and frankly we don’t have the time, because an annual con called the 'Dirty Dozen' has come out once again.

Yes, its that time of year when the Environmental Working Group (EWG) publishes its infamous “dirty dozen" list. They claim they are “guiding” consumers about which foods are most important and to buy organic to avoid pesticide residues, referring to mostly fruits and vegetables. The Group comes up with their rankings based on the published results of the USDA’s Pesticide Data Program.

The USDA data actually shows that consumers don’t need to worry about pesticide residues because they are only present at extremely low levels that are of no concern for our health. Indeed, health and dietary experts agree that one of the best things we can all do for our health is to confidently enjoy healthful foods, and the last thing we should do is avoid fruits and vegetables because of propaganda from EWG.  There is a great website called “Safe Fruits and Veggies” that provides lots of good links on this topic and has a calculator you can use to visualize the absurd amounts of produce you would have to eat to ever see any health effects of residues.

In another episode called “Dirty Marketing,” I explained why the “analysis” by EWG is so flawed and why none of our food deserves to be called “dirty” in this regard. In the whole scheme of things, the only thing that is “dirty” is the EWG’s fear-based campaigning on behalf of their “big organic” sources of funding.

So, let’s talk about the good news, starting with this thing called the Pesticide Data Program or PDP. Each year, scientists from the USDA make visits to commercial food channels and collect more than 10,000 samples of food. They focus on 20 or so crops each year, but they periodically cover most major commodities, particularly fruits and vegetables. The latest data from 2017 analyzed apple sauce, asparagus, fresh and frozen cranberries, cabbage, cucumbers, grapefruit, kale greens, honey, lettuce, mangoes, milk, canned olives, prunes, snap peas, sweet potatoes and garbanzo beans.

The scientists take the foods back to the lab, wash, peel or otherwise handle as normal, and then test for chemical residues. The results are then published in several forms including a high-level “fact sheet”  and a detailed, 200+page report. They also include the raw data so that others can also analyze it. Each year, I like to take advantage of that transparency, although it’s quite a challenge to read through the 2 million-rows of main data table.

So, what the USDA provides each year are three key piece...