U. S. Food and Drug Administration
Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
Office of Plants and Dairy Foods and Beverages
November 2001

FDA Pestrak Files

The following files provide information about pesticides of interest to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) because of their potential for use on foods. Data include names, molecular formulas and references to CFR sections that list food tolerances. Most data relate to compound behavior in analytical methodology for determining residues in foods.

The two sets of files are suitable for use in DOS, Windows or Macintosh systems. All file are compressed (zipped) into self-extracting executable (.exe) format (compressed with PKZip 2.04g). Each file will decompress into a set of ASCII text documents.

Files in this directory are:

1. pestrak.exe: (200 KB)
   
   Five files, including explnptk.txt, which explains the other four. Each of the others is a standard tab-delimited ASCII file that can be imported into database or spreadsheet software. The four files, respectively, contain data on:
   
   
   • chems.txt: pesticides and related chemicals,
   • othnames.txt: alternate names for the chemicals,
   • recvs.txt: recoveries of the chemicals through multiresidue methods published in FDA's Pesticide Analytical Manual Vol. I (PAM I), and
   • gcdat.txt: behavior of the chemicals in PAM I GLC systems.
   
   
   
2. pestdata.exe: (41 KB)
   
   Two files: pestdata.txt, and explnpd.txt, which explains it. Pestdata.txt, a tab-delimited ASCII file that can be imported into database or spreadsheet software, contains data on the behavior of chemicals through PAM I methods. This file is used by FDA to create PAM I Appendix I, which is helpful in identifying residues found using PAM I methods.

To install the data files:

1. To execute data files in DOS, at the DOS prompt (in the Directory where the files are located), type the filename (without .exe) and press the <Enter> key. Repeat this operation for each file.
2. To execute data files in Windows, RUN each of the executable (*.exe) files to extract the data files or double click the icon of the executable data file.
3. To execute data files in Macintosh drag the icon of the *.exe file over the Stuffit Expander icon. A folder containing the individual text files will be created.
4. After decompression occurs, *.exe files can be deleted.

To comment or request further information, contact Carolyn Makovi, cmakovi@cfsan.fda.gov.

To report access problems, contact Fred Fry, frf@vm.cfsan.fda.gov.