US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced that it will begin periodic testing of organic food in 2013, in order to ensure that producers are not using banned pesticides, genetically modified organisms and other substances.
Currently, only few USDA-accredited testing agencies are conducting routine testing on farms after USDA introduced regulations concerning organic food production in 2002.
There are about 93 accredited agents to conduct residue testing, which is not enough to evaluate 30,000 organic food producers globally that sell in the US, reported Livetradingnews.com.
Keeping this in view, USDA plans to make it mandatory for agents to test a minimum of 5% of the farms or production facilities they are contracted to evaluate.
