Summary: The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Pesticide Data Program is not providing pesticide residue data needed to make key regulatory decisions on ensuring food safety. Although the program's ongoing pesticide usage surveys are generally satisfying interagency users, residue data collection has had major problems. USDA originally intended to start providing residue data to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on 22 food commodities and 16 pesticides in July 1991. As of January 1992, however, USDA had not provided any data because it has only assembled partial results on seven commodities and eight pesticides. More importantly, USDA's data are not statistically reliable and will therefore be of limited use to EPA in making upcoming decisions on pesticide safety in food products. Despite its lack of a statistically reliable sampling approach, USDA plans to spend $24 million to collect residue data in fiscal years 1991 and 1992. Further, the absence of agreements with EPA and FDA on the direction of the program means that USDA risks spending money without knowing whether the program is actually improving food safety. At the conclusion of GAO's review, USDA officials said that they were trying to obtain signed agreements with the two agencies. The program's problems are magnified by the absence of an information management strategy.
