Turkey banned a hazardous pesticide in 2020. It’s still showing up in food.
İSTANBUL – After multiple government studies in the United States and Europe found a common pesticide posed serious neurological risks for children, the European Union banned it in 2020.
That year, the Turkish government did the same as its primary export market, Europe, and banned the use of the insecticide known as Chlorpyrifos (pronounced klor·pee·ruh·faas). In 2021, Turkey also banned the use of its variant, Chlorpyrifos-methyl.
Yet traces of both pesticides continue to be found in Turkish food exports and the products are routinely sent back.
Like its counterparts across Europe, the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry established a framework to phase out Chlorpyrifos, but farmers, officials and food safety experts said the banned pesticide is still used in Turkey due to weak regulations and lackluster enforcement, threatening the health of agriculture workers, consumers and their children.
“Chlorpyrifos is just one example,” Bülent Şık, a food engineer, told Turkey recap. “We can say the Ministry [of Agriculture] did not take the necessary precautions or did not do its job well in this regard.”
Şık has written extensively on pesticide use in Turkey, showing the prevalence of banned chemicals in Turkey’s food products by using the EU’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF).
In its public web portal, RASFF shares information on food imports to Europe, their origin nations and details on alerted shipments. Through this system, Şık has highlighted how both Chlorpyrifos and Chlorpyrifos-methyl continue to be used in Turkey as evidenced through traces detected in Turkish food exports to the EU.
RASFF records show both Chlorpyrifos variants are most often found in Turkish citrus products and peppers. The Agriculture Ministry did not respond to interview requests for this report.
Regulations on paper
Between 2013-2022, pesticide use in Turkey increased about 40 percent, according to data from the Agriculture Ministry. This includes insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and other chemicals designed to protect crops in the fields and in storage.
Throughout, the Ministry has updated regulations on how and when specific pesticides can be used. A list of banned substances are phased out with specific timelines, also maintained by the Ministry.
While many pesticides have been found to have adverse effects on humans, animals and the environment, both variants of Chlorpyrifos have drawn international attention over the last decade as a growing body of government studies linked the substances to potential harms on childhood development.
The studies found pre-natal and early-life exposure to Chlorpyrifos can impact neurological development, which can increase risks of memory loss and ADHD, as well as respiratory illness and cancer.
In response, several countries individually began to phase out the pesticide in the mid-2010s. The EU later banned Chlorpyrifos completely in January 2020, after a European Food Safety Authority statement concluded there was “no safe exposure level” for the substance.
In this process, Turkey joined the phase out efforts and ban protocols. The Agriculture Ministry set final import and production dates for the Chlorpyrifos (aka Chlorpyrifos-ethyl) in 2016 and Chlorpyrifos-methyl in 2020, before banning their use in 2020 and 2021, respectively.
But as cited above, both chemicals continued to show up in Turkish fruit and vegetable exports, as documented through RASFF records.
Since the start of 2024, the RASFF system has recorded three food shipments originating from Turkey with traces of Chlorpyrifos-methyl. The alerts involved one shipment of lemons, and two shipments of grapefruits.
According to European Commission reports, this trend has placed Turkey as the most-flagged country of origin for food shipments containing banned pesticide residues, totaling 430 notifications in 2022 and 405 notifications in 2021.
The pesticide trade
Turkey’s Agriculture Ministry has many rules and guidelines overseeing the usage and dosage of pesticides, but there is a lack of adequate enforcement, according to Özden Güngör, executive board member at Turkey’s TMMOB Chamber of Agricultural Engineers.
“It’s true that banned pesticides are used in Turkey,” Güngör said. “The Ministry of Agriculture banned the import and production of some licensed pesticides in our country.”
He continued, “Upon hearing this, many companies imported these banned pesticides in large quantities. Then, the Ministry ordered these companies to produce and sell them until their stocks ran out. So, although it was banned, companies continued to produce and sell [the products], and at high prices.”
Now that legal usage and production dates have passed, Güngör said he believes either the production of banned pesticides continues in Turkey, or the substances continue to be imported from abroad.
Since at least 2016, the Mediterranean agriculture hub of Antalya has topped lists of pesticide usage by province in Turkey, according to Agriculture Ministry data.
Speaking to Turkey recap on condition they not be identified, an Antalya-based farmer and his daughter said local agriculture supply stores follow some regulations, but there are also many loopholes customers can exploit to purchase banned products.
“If you have the money, you can buy what you want,” the farmer said.
The pair operate a family business and sell tomatoes, peppers and strawberries at local markets. The daughter said they used legal and licensed products that require identification for purchases, which are then logged into a data bank kept by the Agriculture Ministry.
But this is not always the case. Some agriculture supply stores sell both licensed and unlicensed products, the latter often being cheaper and of lower quality, the farmer told Turkey recap. There are also certain products, like banned rodent poison, which some stores sell under the table.
He went on, saying fertilizer purchases require mandatory identification and a farmer’s license, but pesticides are not as strictly monitored and can be purchased without documents.
“Watch out when you see tomatoes suddenly go from high prices to very low prices,” the farmer said. “That means they got rejected for export and sent back, so the merchant is just trying to sell them fast.”
“In those cases, you are in God’s hands,” he added, referring to the risks consumers take on when purchasing certain produce.
Few perceived alternatives
There are groups in Turkey campaigning and organizing programs to reduce pesticide usage, but their impact remains limited as Bülent Şık estimates the total share of organic farming in Turkey currently represents about 0.8 percent of total food production.
The Antalya-based association, BİOTED, is among those promoting pesticide alternatives in Turkey. Noting heavy pesticide usage can harm bees and other organisms needed to produce food, BIOTED General Secretary İsmail Karaca promotes what he calls biological pest control.
“It is possible to catch the pests with different traps and reduce their populations,” Karaca told Turkey recap. “It is also possible to fight against the pests by making some changes in their living environments.”
“Unfortunately, the rate of biological control use in our country is around two percent,” he added.
When Turkey recap asked the Antalya farmers if they had tried to grow crops without pesticides, the farmer’s daughter said:
“In Antalya, it’s impossible to do organic farming. We tried it during the pandemic and lost our entire crop of strawberries to insects.”
The father added: “The warmer the weather, the more pesticide you need because of the humidity.”
Hidayet Gökçe, president for the Chamber of Agriculture in the Antalya district of Kumluca, echoed the dilemma, saying local farmers must use fungicides due to the region’s high humidity. Though he underlined pesticide use in his district is always legal, documented and strictly controlled by the Agriculture Ministry and Chamber of Agricultural Engineers.
Gökçe said crop inspections for pesticides are conducted randomly on food producers in the fields and in distribution warehouses several times a year. If banned pesticides are found, Gökçe says the authorities are notified and the parties involved are penalized.
“When someone uses banned pesticides or uses legal pesticides incorrectly, both the farmer and the pesticide dealer are penalized,” Gökçe told Turkey recap. “That's why everyone has to be very careful.
The camel’s neck
Gökçe went on, saying farmers follow the same regulations for crops sold in domestic markets and crops sold abroad. He said when products are planted, farmers don’t know where they will end up.
“In other words, we normally produce for exports,” Gökçe told Turkey recap. “We do not know whether it will go to the domestic market or the foreign market.”
Asked if he had heard of Chlorpyrifos usage violations in his district – which is known to produce tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers – Gökçe said he was not familiar with all pesticides names, but that local suppliers and farmers complied with regulations.
“A banned pesticide is definitely not found on the shelves of pesticide stores,” Gökçe said, referring to his district. “It is impossible to find them on the shelves of those shops.”
He then added, there can sometimes be a lag between bans in Europe and bans in Turkey.
“We are 4-5 years behind Europe,” Gökçe said. “It is European countries that gave us all of these pesticides in the past.”
“So, if Europe banned it five years ago, we also banned it five years ago,” he added. “However, the products that were produced and sent [to Turkey] will expire over time.”
Gökçe reiterated there were enforcement mechanisms, mostly conducted by agricultural engineers on the ground. But Özden Güngör, from the Chamber of Agricultural Engineers, told Turkey recap the sale of banned pesticides continues due to inadequate inspections by the Agriculture Ministry.
“Unfortunately, illegal and counterfeit pesticides have not been prevented in our country. A lack of inspections is the biggest problem,” Güngör said, offering an idiom to underline his point: “When they asked the camel why its neck was crooked, the camel asked, ‘Where is my body straight?’”
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This article is part of a series of environmental reports produced with support from the Heinrich Böll Stiftung Turkey Office, and in no way can be interpreted to reflect the views of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung.
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