Pesticide Residue Testing Needs to be Dramatically Improved to Help Address Fraud in Organic

(Image courtesy of the International Organic Inspectors Association)

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Last week, at the National Organic Standards Board spring meeting, an important recommendation was passed to help root out fraud and assist organic certifiers in becoming more effective with pesticide residue testing.

Currently, USDA-accredited organic certifiers must annually test products from at least 5% of the organic farms and businesses they certify for pesticide residues and other prohibited substances, and a widely used pesticide residue test employed by organic certifiers is called QuEChERS (Quick, Easy, Cheap, Effective, Rugged, Safe).

Unfortunately, the QuEChERS method, which serves as a somewhat one-size-fits-all test, is anything but.

In 2011, the USDA even acknowledged this when it said, “The NOP recognizes that not all registered pesticides can be reliably determined using the QuEChERS method.”

Additionally, when it comes to the Prohibited Pesticides for NOP Residue Testing, glyphosate — the most ubiquitous herbicide in the world and one that has likely contaminated the organic supply chain more than any other chemical — is not listed.

“Testing deployment to verify integrity needs to be improved; the NOP documents, related to testing, were generated more than ten years ago and are long overdue for a revision,” said Amy Bruch, a 6th generation farmer at Cyclone Farms in Nebraska and a current member of the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB). “QuEChERS doesn’t have glyphosate, dicamba or others you would expect in a test for feedstuffs for conventional grain producers.”

With the NOSB having passed a proposal to update the training materials for organic certifiers in the NOP Handbook, it now goes to the USDA for its comments and approval.

“With this update, we went into more critical thinking, with instructions and guidance for certifiers,” put forth Kyla Smith, certification policy advisor at Pennsylvania Certified Organic and also a current member of the NOSB. “We are encouraging certifiers to use their resources, such as talking to the lab or extension, to try to determine the best test for the crop, region and time of year. Testing needs to be very specific for each farmer, and most certifiers do not understand just how ineffective QuEChERS really is in many situations.”

ACTION ON THE FEDERAL LEVEL

The issue of pesticide residue testing in organic has also caught the attention of two members of Congress, Senator Pete Ricketts (R-NE) and Senator Tina Smith (D-MN), and last month, they introduced the Organic Imports Verification Act of 2025 (OIVA).

This bill, among other things, would develop and regularly update risk-based protocols for determining the high-risk status of organic feedstuffs and establish parameters for residue testing.

Implementing pesticide testing reforms on a more broad scale, however, will not only require greater financial resources but people as well.

And with 15,000 USDA employees no longer employed at the agency, something Politico reported on Monday, executing OIVA could potentially be a real challenge.

That being said, Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides, remains optimistic.

“When you stack up conventional versus organic, one is a cost to society — with the poisoning of people and the environment, and exorbitant health care costs — and one adds to society, with health benefits and no adverse effects. It is simply a matter of time before more and more politicians understand this and recognize the common good that organic provides.”

With gratitude, Max Goldberg, Founder