Welcome to the Inadvertent Pesticide Contamination Survey
A Survey of Certified Organic Producers, Processors, and Handlers
Inadvertent pesticide contamination is a major challenge faced by organic producers, processors, and handlers in the United States. However, national data are lacking on stakeholders’ experiences with and perspectives on inadvertent pesticide contamination. Some key questions are: To what extent is inadvertent pesticide contamination impacting U.S. organic producers, processors, and handlers? What actions are organic producers, processors, and handlers taking to mitigate risks? What are their most pressing concerns and research/outreach needs? We would like to address these and other questions by conducting this important survey.
For the purposes of this study, inadvertent pesticide contamination refers to unintentional contamination of agricultural products (i.e., crops, livestock, poultry, or other agricultural products) due to spray drift, runoff, contaminated equipment, contaminated storage or shipping containers, contaminated groundwater, contaminated rain or snow, or other sources of pesticide contamination of agricultural products. Pesticide is defined as an herbicide, insecticide, miticide, or fungicide.
IMPORTANT: Please complete the survey even if you have never experienced inadvertent pesticide contamination in your organic operation.
The survey is being administered by Washington State University. For questions about the survey content, please email Jessica Goldberger at jgoldberger@wsu.edu. If you experience any technical difficulties with the survey, please contact Thom Allen, at 509-335-1722 or ted@wsu.edu.
The survey is voluntary, confidential, and will take approximately 15 minutes to complete. You can skip any questions you prefer not to answer. We welcome you to complete the survey in multiple sittings. The online survey saves your responses as you go along. You can stop at any point, and then resume the survey at any time by entering your survey access code, which is generated when you first start the survey.
Thank you for your time and support of this project!
The project is supported by the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (OREI) grant no. 2020-51300-32261 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.