You heard that right, PAN UK is moving towards promoting Cosmetic Usage Bans on Supermarket Fruit and Vegetables.
One area that all companies do badly on is reducing use of pesticides to produce cosmetically perfect fresh produce.
Talking to agronomists, many agree that less pesticide could be used if retailers and consumers were more willing to accept minor blemishes or spotting, for example, on citrus and apples. This is a good illustration of how consumers are also partly responsible for current high levels of reliance on pesticides.
PAN UK is keen to explore ways of educating consumers and buyer staff in supermarkets on this issue and to support ways for growers to sell more of any second grade produce at a fair price. Several retailers recently introduced ranges of small or non-uniform size or appearance, in order to cut back on waste, for environmental benefit and economic benefits to consumers and growers.
This should be expanded to address cosmetic pesticide use.
http://www.pan-uk.org/supermarkets/what-are-uk-supermarkets-doing-about-pesticide-problems
