On 14 Jun 2016, Brazil ANVISA approved a regulatory initiative to amend the procedure for pesticide reevaluation, aim at bringing more transparent and predictability during reevaluation process of pesticide with evidence of altered risk to human health.

According to a survey result revealed by a local newspaper, La Nación, total sales of Argentine agrochemical companies were 2.4 billion USD in 2015, a significant decrease of 16.7% on the previous year of 2.9 billion USD. The five largest companies: Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow AgroSciences, Bayer and Athanor suffered revenue decline of 455.1 million USD, representing 92.2% of the market decline.

On 6 Jun 2016, China ICAMA issued an interim guideline,  “Guideline on Crop/Area Distribution for the Residue Study of Pesticide Registration”, which will take effect on 1 Aug 2016.

According to the China Crop Protection Industry Association, total sales of the top 100 pesticide companies were 103.84 billion CNY in 2015, a slight decrease of 2.35% on the previous year of 106.33 billion CNY. The qualifying criterion for the ranking list reduced to a minimum of 324 million CNY per annum turnover, reflecting a minor decline of 1.24%.

Recently, Ministry of Agriculture of Malaysia released guideline for biopesticide registration. In the guideline, the MOA mainly provide data requirements for microbial and botanical registration.

On 11 May 2016, Brazil National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA) published a technical note to specify two exemption conditions for acute inhalation toxicity test for pesticide formulation and the applicable result for toxicological classification of pesticide. In Brazil, the inhalation toxicity data are mandatorily required for pesticide registration and the study should be performed under internationally recognized methods and the OECD test protocols most often accepted. The latest OECD Test Guideline 403-Acute Inhalation Toxicity has been appended with new procedures and parameters for lethal concentration inhalation study. ANVISA deems it is necessary to consolidate the technical reference with the requirement, acceptability and interpretation of study result to determine the endpoint.

On 23 May 2016, China Ministry of Agriculture issued the Announcement 2405 to promulgate 64 pesticide industry standards to be in force on 1 Oct 2016, of which 7 standards are firstly enacted for pesticide environmental risk assessment.

After a booming growth of pesticide import value and quantity in 2014, in 2015 Thailand pesticide importation cools down. Even though the import quantity stays similar with 2014, the total value has decreased by 21.4%. 

Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR) was held at WHO Headquarters, Geneva (Switzerland), from 9 to 13 May 2016.