King Cotton - pesticide residue is common in cotton byproducts used in agriculture - Brief Article

Sierra, May, 1999 by Daniel Imhoff

First we soak it in pesticides--then we eat it

Few people think of cotton as a food. Yet once the familiar fiber is stripped away, two-thirds of the cotton crop winds up in the food we eat. If you drink milk or eat beef or processed foods, you are likely an indirect consumer of a crop that is grown and regulated with slight attention to its importance as a foodstuff.

"Chemicals that have been banned for food crops are still being used on cotton," says Will Allen, founder of the California-based Sustainable Cotton Project. Nearly one-quarter of all pesticides used in the United States are applied to cotton, and the overall amount and intensity per acre is increasing every year. Worldwide, more pesticides, some of them extremely toxic, are sprayed on cotton than on any other crop.

How much of them end up in your diet? Every year in the United States, half a million tons of cottonseed oil goes into processed salad dressings, baked goods, and snacks like Fritos and Goldfish. Another 3 million tons of cottonseed is fed to beef and dairy cattle, which also eat vast amounts of the cotton by-products known as "gin trash."

The industry view is that pesticide residues are removed from cottonseeds during their chemically intensive processing: the seeds are washed with caustic lye or sodium hydroxide and the oil is extracted with hexane, a highly volatile solvent, and is then filtered through sulfuric-acid-laden clay. (Foreign-produced cottonseed oil is sometimes extracted with a mixture of hexane and benzene, a known carcinogen that is very difficult to remove.) But residues from pesticides such as the defoliant DEF have frequently appeared on California Department of Food and Agriculture scans of cottonseed and other cotton by-products over the past decade. Cottonseed oil, however, is rarely tested for pesticides, according to Young Lee, staff scientist at the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition at the Food and Drug Administration. In 1997, no cottonseed oil at all was tested. (Only 13 samples of other domestic oils and 19 imports were tested; two of the imports showed pesticide residues.) "Certainly contamination is a possibility," says Lee. "We don't have the data to say one way or the other."

The most direct entry for pesticides into the human food supply is through the spent seed hulls and gin trash that are regularly fed to cattle. In California, gin trash consistently tests positive for toxic pesticides, so much so that the state has banned its use as a livestock feed. In Texas, "it's no secret that gin trash is being fed to cattle," says Tom Wedegaernter, director of the cotton industry's leading trade association. In fact, many Texas cattle eat up to 4 percent gin trash as a "finishing ration" in the last months before slaughter. But, says Texas state chemist George Latimer, only one-half of one percent of the material is tested, so the "chances of finding contaminated trash are pretty small."

If you don't look for something, you don't have to worry about finding it. When the USDA recently screened the nation's milk supply as part of its Pesticide Data Program, it failed to test for DEF, dicofol, arsenic, or paraquat--all highly toxic chemicals used on cotton. Frank Galey, a toxicologist with the California Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory System, says that cows probably metabolize and detoxify cotton chemicals safely, but admits there is no data one way or the other. Galey does, however, strongly urge more testing, particularly of gin trash.

Those who don't want to serve as involuntary guinea pigs for future studies can take heart in the recent decision by the USDA to allow the sale of certified organic meat. To meet the standard, animals must be raised with access to fresh air and sunlight and eat only organically grown feed, including cottonseed.

Demand for organic meat has spawned a lively market for organic cottonseed, about 9,000 acres of which were grown in 1998. In California, says feed distributor Ken Frank of Modesto Mills, "there's a big dogfight for it." Frank bought all the certified cottonseed he could find to supply the state's growing organic dairies, whose customers demand more than the assumption that everything will probably be all right.

DANIEL IMHOFF'S last story for Sierra, "Beyond Organic," appeared in the January/ February issue.