On 27 June 2013, the New Zealand EPA released their decision on reassessment of organophosphate and carbamates-based (OPC) insecticides. The Committee decided that OPCs use in the indoor applications by unqualified user should be discontinued due to its inherent toxicity. For agricultural applications, their use should be allowed to continue with additional controls imposed to diminish the risk to people’s health and the environment.

Serving as a universal basis for international legislation, the food safety standards under the Codex Alimentarius (CAC) have far reaching implications for resolving trade disputes among the WTO members. The Codex Committee on Pesticide Residue (CCPR) is responsible of establishing, revising and revoking pesticide MRLs in food and preparing schedule of MRLs setting ( also known as the Priority Lists) for evaluations by the JMPR (Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues), which play an important role of the MRL establishment. During the development of priority lists, stakeholders engaged in fierce negotiations to protect their interests.

It is reported that the glyphosate manufacturing companies in Zhejiang are investigated by the public security department for the environmental crime and the manufacturers of glyphosate TC in Zhejiang are currently off production. Wynca and Jinfanda were reported of having sneakily discharged the glyphosate pollutants into the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal through a chemical warehousing and transporting company.

The Philippines Food and Drug Administration is currently inviting public comments on the household pesticide regulation, the “Revised General Rules and Regulations Governing the Licensing and Registration of Household/Urban Pesticides and for Other Purposes”.

On 5 June 2013, China’s MoA issued a notice to its provincial subordinates and associated testing facilities that pesticide manufacturers will be subject to randomized special quality testing. ICAMA will send appropriate personnel and take samples of products from the subject companies.

On May 27 2013, China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) announced the preliminary rulings of an ongoing anti-dumping investigation of pyridine from India and Japan. An initial sanction in the form of a security deposit is to be imposed on imported pyridine from India and Japan.

On May 21 2013, the MEP issued a notice to its subordinates, the affected industry associations and the glyphosateTC (PMIDA) manufacturing companies that environmental verification is to be imposed on all the manufacturers in the next three years and the name lists of compliant manufacturers will be compiled for public reference.

Though bromomethane used to be one of the most widely used fumigant around the world, it is destined to be eliminated due to its ozone-depleting properties. China has promised to ban its use in agricultural, tobacco production and grains by Jan 1, 2015, which will be almost ten years after many other developed countries. It is still unclear which fumigant will fill the market gap after the removal of bromomethane, which once accounted for a quarter of global sales.

On May 16 2013, the ICAMA circulated a notice to the concerned labs that they will be proficiency tested. The testing facilities of environmental study for pesticide registration are asked to perform test items on unknown samples and submit the test report to ICAMA. ICAMA will check the report and evaluate whether these facilities are capable of obtaining accurate data for pesticide registration.

The GB 2763-2012, which was issued under the joint Announcement 22 of MOA and MOH, has come into force on Mar 1 2013. As the latest compulsory standard, it contains 2293 limits for 322 active ingredients on 10 categories of food commodities, and can also be considered as a replacement of some previous national standards and industrial standards of pesticide MRLs. Overview of the 2293 MRLs The GB 2763-2012 set 2253 MRLs for plant-derived food and 40 for animal-derived food, constituting around 98.2% and 1.87% respectively. Vegetables will be subject to the most MRLs, followed by fruits, cereals and cereal products, oil plants and oil products, sugar crops, beverages and edible fungus (see Table 1). Table 1: Distribution of MRLs in different food categories GB 2763-2012 vs GB 2763-2005 Compared with the 2005 version, GB2763-2012 has a number of improvements: 1.More explicit in scope, terms and definitions. The 2005 version provided a precondition that “when producing food or protecting food commodities from pests, the pesticide should be utilized according to the rules of Good Agricultural Practices (GAP)”, which left the loopholes of MRL violations on some food commodities as the poor enforcement of GAP in China. The removal of this precondition has broadened the range of acceptable MRLs. Furthermore, other definitions in 2005 versions which included the “acute reference dose”, “provisional-acceptable daily intake”, and “provisional tolerable daily intake” have been removed as well. An important revision is that the English name/definition of the residue, the “pesticide residue” has been amended as is now reffered to as the “residue definition” (hereafter refer to the “pesticide residue” as “residue definition”). To better explain the MRLs applicable in different crops and food commodities, GB 2763-2012 specified the crop/food ranges in its Informative Annex