Five in a row for food safety
For the fifth year in a row, CSL has achieved outstanding results in the European Commission's annual Proficiency Test on pesticide residues in food.
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A point of reference
Top results in the European Commission’s Proficiency Test on food pesticide residues, demonstrate CSL's status as a National Residue Laboratory.
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Pesticides
Our pestcides teams offer a broad range of expertise in four areas, which cover many aspects of the use of pesticides from 'farm to fork':
Most of our work is undertaken to provide a service to the Pesticide Safety Directorate (PSD) and to a wide range of commercial customers, mainly from the food industry. Much of the service work we undertake for PSD is underpinned by a research and development programme, designed to improve analytical capability, reduce costs and provide a rapid response.
Collaborations
Collaborations are essential to the delivery of our scientific objectives. We have established close working relationships with:
- UK and overseas universities
- Laboratories, such as RIKILT in the Netherlands
- International organisations, such as the International Atomic Energy Authority
- Suppliers and manufacturers of scientific instruments
Activities
Science Development
Our Science Development team plays a leading role nationally and internationally in exploiting new techniques for pesticide-residue analysis, particularly those associated with recent advances in instrumentation.
Our aim is to develop new, improved multi-residue methods that together provide a comprehensive and cost-effective analytical strategy for determining pesticide residues in foods. The team enjoys a growing international reputation for successfully applying new chromatography-mass spectrometry techniques to pesticide residue analysis.
The objective of our work is to lower costs, improve efficiency, lower reporting limits, expand analytical suites and improve the quality of residue data.
Analytical Services
Our Analytical Services team assesses a variety of fresh and processed foods, beverages and crops for a wide range of pesticide residues. Visit our Analytical Services section for more information about this work.
Pesticide Usage Survey
The team has internationally recognised expertise in the approval status, use and impact of pesticides in UK agriculture and horticulture.
Our usage surveys on a range of crops play a vital role in the Government's post-approval monitoring of pesticides. They feed into many areas of government policy on pesticides, providing information on current and past usage patterns and allowing the impact of use on the environment, operator and consumer to be accurately assessed.
Wildlife Incident Unit
Working closely with the Wildlife Incident Investigation Scheme (WIIS), the Wildlife Incident Unit (WIU) plays a key role in investigating the effects of pesticides on animals, insects and the environment.
Visit the Wildlife Incident Unit page to find out more.
Achievements
- Monitoring the effects of anticoagulant rodenticides has contributed to their environmentally sustainable use.
- Globally important research carried out into the impact of diclofenac on vulture populations in the Indian subcontinent has achieved a better understanding of the reasons for the decline of this species.
- Development of a GC-MS/MS and LC-MS/MS strategy for the determination of pesticides in baby foods has achieved the low detection limits required under the latest EU regulations.
- Providing training programmes on pesticide usage surveys for eight of the ten new EU member states, plus Romania and Bulgaria.
Research activities
Brief descriptions of some recent projects are available here.
| Posters | |
| Multi-Residue Analysis of Pesticides in Spices |  (214kb) |
| How multi-purpose is multi-residue pesticide | (92kb) |
Recent publications
Leandro C C, Fussell R J, Keely B J: Determination of priority pesticides in baby foods by gas chromatography tandem quadrupole mass spectrometry. Journal of Chromatography A, Vol 1085, pp 207-212.
Patel K, Fussell R J, Hetmanski M, Goodall D M, Keely B J: Evaluation of gas chromatography-tandem quadrupole mass spectrometry for the determination of organochlorine pesticides in fats and oils. Journal of Chromatography A, Vol 1068, pp 289-296.
Reynolds S L, Fussell R J, Macarthur R: Investigation into the validity of extrapolation in setting maximum residue levels for pesticides in crops of similar morphology. Food Additives & Contaminants, Vol 22, pp 31-38.
Leandro C C, Fussell R J, Keely B J: Comparison of ultra-performance liquid chromatography and high-performance liquid chromatography for the determination of priority pesticides in baby foods by tandem quadrupole mass spectrometry. Journal of Chromatography A, Vol 1103, pp 94-101.
Leandro C C, Bishop D, Fussell R J, Smith F, Keely B J: Semi-automated determination of pesticides in water and juices using solid-phase extraction disks and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, Vol 54, pp 645-649.
Patel K, Fussell R J, Goodall D M, Keely B J: Application of programmable vaporising injection with resistive heating - gas chromatography flame photometric detection for the determination of organophosphorus pesticides. Journal of Separation Science, Vol 29, 90-95.