In 2007, the Cabinet of Ministers considered a paper on cancer and non-communicable diseases in Mauritius. Item 6 of the Cabinet decisions of that meeting noted the connection between the excessive use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides and the high prevalence of cancer among the Mauritian population. The Minister of Agro-Industry at the time of that Cabinet decision was Arvin Boolell. [Cabinet Decision No. 6, 2007, pmo.govmu.org/CabinetDecision/2007/]

That was nineteen years ago. In 2025, the government’s own pesticide monitoring laboratory is still finding the same chemicals in the same food supply, at levels that exceed the legal limits. The findings are recorded in monthly reports that the Pesticides Regulatory Office publishes on the Ministry of Agro-Industry website. They are not summarised anywhere accessible to the public. They are not reported in the press. They sit on a government website, available to any person who knows where to look.

This investigation reviewed all ten published monthly pesticide residue monitoring reports for 2025, covering January through October, produced by the Pesticides Regulatory Office. [PRO Monthly Reports, January to October 2025, agriculture.govmu.org] The full-year picture is more significant than any single result.

What the Tests Are

The Pesticides Regulatory Office conducts monthly pesticide residue monitoring under the Pesticides Act 2018. Inspectors collect samples from farm gates, the National Wholesale Market at Wooton, supermarkets, retailers and import entry points. Each sample is tested in a government laboratory. Results are measured in milligrams of pesticide per kilogram of food and compared against Maximum Residue Levels, which are the legal upper limits set for each pesticide on each type of crop.

An exceedance means the food tested above the legal limit. A finding marked NR, or Not Recommended, means the pesticide detected has no approved use on that crop in Mauritius at all. Both indicate that a consumer eating that food was exposed to chemicals that should not have been present at those levels. The monthly reports are publicly available at agriculture.govmu.org but are not distributed to consumers, supermarkets or the press.

The Most Significant Findings of 2025

In February 2025, a government laboratory tested a head of lettuce bought at a supermarket in Flacq. The result: thiophanate-methyl at 5.000 milligrams per kilogram. The legal maximum for that chemical on that vegetable is 0.100 milligrams per kilogram: fifty times the permitted amount of a fungicide that the European Union classifies as a probable human carcinogen. [PRO Monthly Report, February 2025] The Pesticides Regulatory Office did not flag this sample as an exceedance in its published report. The finding sits in the data table, but the summary column that should read “Excess” is blank.

The imported avocado from January 2025 is the highest multiple recorded in the 2025 dataset: prochloraz at sixty times the legal limit. Prochloraz is a fungicide applied in post-harvest treatment of fruit. The European Food Safety Authority classifies it as an endocrine disruptor. [EFSA Conclusion on Prochloraz, EFSA Journal 2011] The PRO January report lists the finding as an exceedance. No information about the country of origin or the importer is given in the published document. No recall or public consumer warning has been found in any subsequent government communication.

Pesticides on Crops They Are Not Approved For

Beyond the exceedances, every monthly report contains findings marked NR, or Not Recommended. An NR result does not mean the level detected was above a legal limit. It means the pesticide found on that crop has no approved legal use in Mauritius for that crop at all. There is no Maximum Residue Level because the combination is simply not permitted.

In March 2025, inspectors collected a head of lettuce from a wholesale market source in Belle Mare. The analysis found imidacloprid at 5.800 milligrams per kilogram and methomyl at 2.300 milligrams per kilogram. Both are marked NR. Neither chemical is approved for use on lettuce in Mauritius. In the same sampling round, green kale from the same area tested positive for imidacloprid at 2.500 mg/kg, carbendazim at 1.100 mg/kg, acetamiprid at 0.220 mg/kg and methomyl at 0.610 mg/kg. All four are NR. [PRO Monthly Report, March 2025]

Carbendazim is banned in the European Union for use on food crops and is classified as a reproductive toxicant. [European Commission Regulation EC No 149/2008] Imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid, is banned for outdoor agricultural use in the EU. [European Commission Implementing Regulation 2018/783] Both appear on vegetables sold in Mauritian markets throughout 2025. Across the ten months reviewed, 133 NR findings were recorded. The most frequently identified NR pesticides include acetamiprid, metalaxyl, linuron, carbendazim and tebuconazole, appearing consistently across different crops and different months.

When an Exceedance Disappears

The question of what happens after a finding is recorded is not answered anywhere in the published reports. The cycle below describes what the documents show. It is notable not for what it contains, but for what it does not.

The Month-by-Month Record

The monitoring data, taken across ten consecutive months, establishes that exceedances are not concentrated in any particular season or period. February recorded the highest single-month count of unapproved-use findings, at 23 NR detections from 117 samples, and was also the month containing the Flacq supermarket lettuce carrying thiophanate-methyl at 50 times the legal limit, a finding that did not appear in the report’s own summary column as an exceedance. April produced the highest single-month tally of MRL breaches, at nine exceedances from 105 samples, including chilli from a Wooton retail outlet at 5.2 times the metalaxyl limit. June recorded an imported bell pepper carrying acephate at 52 times its Maximum Residue Level, alongside methamidophos at eight times the limit. September and October, the two months with the smallest sample numbers (44 and 29 respectively), both produced exceedances. Across the full ten months, 787 government-collected samples yielded at least 47 MRL exceedances and 133 detections of pesticides with no approved use on the crop in question. Not one of those 47 recorded exceedances produced a publicly documented consumer alert. [PRO Monthly Reports, January to October 2025, Primary Source Data]

Imported Food and the Border Gap

Several of the most serious findings in 2025 involve imported produce. The PRO tests imported food alongside locally grown produce, and the results show that the problem is not limited to Mauritian farming practices. The January avocado at sixty times the prochloraz limit was imported. In June 2025, imported bell peppers carried acephate at 0.520 mg/kg against an MRL of 0.010, and methamidophos at 0.080 mg/kg against an MRL of 0.010. Acephate is banned for food crop use in the European Union. [PRO Monthly Reports, January and June 2025]

The PRO reports do not identify the country of origin for imported samples and do not name the importer. There is no record in the published reports of any consignment being rejected at the border, recalled from sale or communicated to consumers following an import exceedance.

Eight Years of Official Import Data

The detailed transaction-level import database published by Statistics Mauritius, combined with the Digest of External Trade Statistics 2024, makes it possible to quantify how much the country imports in pesticides and fertilisers each year. The figures cover 2017 to 2024 and come from SITC Group 591 (insecticides, rodenticides, fungicides, herbicides and related products) and SITC Group 562 (manufactured fertilisers). [Statistics Mauritius, Digest of External Trade Statistics 2024, Table 11; Detailed Trade Data by HS, Country and Month, statsmauritius.govmu.org]

In 2024, Mauritius imported 3,574 tonnes of pesticides at a cost of Rs 865 million. That is the highest import volume recorded across the eight years of available data. In 2017, the figure was 2,427 tonnes. Over the period 2017 to 2024, the value of pesticide imports increased by 86 per cent. The quantity increased by 47 per cent. For the first eight months of 2026 alone, provisional figures already show 2,384 tonnes imported at Rs 555 million, a pace that would, if sustained, place 2026 above the 2023 full-year total of 2,368 tonnes.

The fertiliser import picture is different in structure but consistent in scale. Fertiliser imports (SITC 562) peaked in value in 2022 at Rs 1,000 million (one billion rupees in a single year), driven by the global price shock that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting disruption to international fertiliser supply chains. The volume has declined since then: from 44,028 tonnes in 2017 to 26,674 tonnes in 2024. The value remains substantially above 2017 levels.

The import data establishes a baseline that the PRO monitoring data cannot by itself provide: the total chemical load entering the agricultural system each year. In 2024, 3,574 tonnes of pesticide products and 26,674 tonnes of fertilisers entered Mauritius through official import channels. The PRO testing programme sampled 787 items from the food that those chemicals were used to grow. The relationship between the two datasets, specifically what enters and what is found in the food, is the gap this investigation is concerned with.

The Cancer Record

The 2007 Cabinet decision placed pesticide use and cancer on the government's formal agenda. In the years since, the government has published monthly data on pesticide residues in food and annual data on hospital admissions, cancer registrations, and deaths from neoplasms. That data now makes it possible to examine what has happened to the cancer burden in Mauritius during the period in which the monitoring programme has been running.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organisation, estimated in its September 2026 Mauritius fact sheet that 2,976 new cancer cases would arise in the country during 2024, with 1,471 deaths. The agency's age-standardised incidence rate for Mauritius stands at 147.6 new cases per 100,000 population. On current trajectories, one in 6.5 people in Mauritius will develop cancer before the age of 75. Women face a lifetime risk of one in 5.9; men, one in 7.3. These are the most current international benchmarks published for the country and are based on the Mauritius National Cancer Registry supplied to IARC.

The Mauritius National Cancer Registry, drawing on hospital records across the public health system, registered 3,201 new cancer cases in 2022, the most recent year for which confirmed registry data has been published. The National Cancer Centre alone treated 2,173 admissions in 2023, with breast cancer (323 cases), colon cancer (306 cases), and lung cancer (192 cases) as the three most common presentations. These figures count different populations: the registry captures newly diagnosed cases across all facilities, while the cancer centre figure reflects the active treatment caseload at the dedicated oncology facility. Both sets of data point to a substantial and continuing clinical burden.

Source: Ministry of Health, Health Statistics Report 2023, Deaths by Chapter of ICD and Sex 2021–2023. Neoplasms category (ICD-10 Chapter II). Covid-19 deaths were 785 in 2021, 248 in 2022 and 50 in 2023. The rising cancer share reflects both a growing absolute number of cancer deaths and a falling total mortality count in the post-pandemic period.

The three-year mortality record shows a consistent and worsening pattern. Between 2021 and 2023, the absolute number of cancer deaths increased from 1,376 to 1,468. More significantly, as total mortality in Mauritius fell following the Covid-19 peak, cancer's share of all deaths rose from 10.6 per cent to 12.7 per cent. As the country has moved through the post-pandemic period, cancer has been claiming a larger proportion of lives each year. No published study from the Ministry of Health or any other government body has examined the relationship between this trend and the pesticide residue patterns documented in the same ministry's monthly monitoring reports.

The distribution of cancer by anatomical site provides context that is directly relevant to the food supply question. Of the 3,201 new cases registered in 2022, malignancies of the digestive organs were the single largest grouping, accounting for 667 cases or 20.8 per cent of the total. Colon cancer alone accounted for 253 cases. Stomach cancer contributed 104 cases and pancreatic cancer 98. Breast cancer was the leading individual cancer site with 637 new registrations, representing one in five of all new diagnoses. Prostate cancer produced 261 new registrations. Respiratory malignancies, including lung cancer, accounted for 208 cases or 6.5 per cent of the total. Haematological malignancies, which include leukaemia and lymphoma, contributed 282 cases or 8.8 per cent.

The concentration of malignancies in the digestive tract is directly relevant to the subject of this investigation. Pesticide residues consumed through food are absorbed and processed by the gastrointestinal system. Colon cancer, stomach cancer and pancreatic cancer are among the sites most studied in relation to dietary pesticide exposure in epidemiological literature. The 667 digestive-tract cases registered in 2022 represent the largest single cancer grouping in the national registry for that year. No epidemiological study linking Mauritius's food pesticide monitoring data to the national cancer registration figures appears in any published government document identified in the course of this investigation.

The 2023 Health Statistics Report contains two additional findings that sit alongside the cancer data. The report records 56 hospital admissions or deaths attributed to intentional self-poisoning by pesticides during 2023, involving 40 men and 16 women. A separate figure from the same report shows 3,199 first attendances recorded under the category of toxic effects of noxious foodstuffs and other poisoning. The Government Occupational Health Clinics recorded ten cases of disease caused by chemical agents in 2023. The occupational cancer row in the same table records no cases. Pesticide applicators in Mauritius work under regulatory conditions this investigation has documented as insufficiently enforced. The zero figure for occupational cancer in the government's own occupational health records is a number that invites examination rather than reassurance.

What Happens After an Exceedance Is Found

Each monthly PRO report documents the full chain from sample collection to laboratory result. Based on those published reports, the procedural sequence is as follows.

The Same Warning, Nineteen Years Apart

The 2007 Cabinet paper is the earliest point in the public record at which the Mauritian government named the link between pesticide use and cancer at Cabinet level. The minister responsible for agriculture at that time was Arvin Boolell. Between 2010 and 2014, the government implemented a Cancer Action Plan that included commitments on monitoring chemical exposure and reviewing pesticide use practices. A review of the public record does not identify any government report from that period concluding that pesticide monitoring had been resolved as a public health concern.

In 2026, the government announced a new committee to examine the link between pesticide use and cancer rates in Mauritius. The study that committee will conduct is, in substance, the same study that the 2007 Cabinet paper said needed to be done. In the nineteen years between those two moments, the PRO has continued its monthly monitoring. The 2025 findings show that the practices which prompted the original concern in 2007 are still producing the same results today.