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

China owns about 2.11 million hectares of tea plantation and the yield has reached 1.62 million tons in 2011. As an important cash crop, the residue problems caused by tea protection products are threatening China’s tea exportation and public health.

On April 24 2013, the MoA issued a notice to the provincial subordinates that a new round of qualification review on pesticide registration labs will be carried out. The testing facilities of efficacy, residue and environmental effect are required to submit their paper application materials to the MoA’s Department of Plantation Management and the ICAMA.

On April 22, 2013, Chinese Ministry of Agricultural announced that it has set up the 7th Expert Committee for Fertilizer Registration and the 1st plenary session of the Committee has been held in Beijing.

According to a source from the ICAMA, China has established its rules of toxicological study for microbial pesticide and the rules have been fully implemented last September, which could be considered as a major step forward in China’s safety evaluation and regulatory practice on bio-pesticide products.

On April 16, 2013, the MoA solicited opinions on 1280 MRLs of 113 ais  in food. Most of the ais have been included in the “Maximum Residue Limits for Pesticides in Food (GB2763-2012)”, which has been implemented on Mar 1 2013. However, the draft covered more crop ranges and some of the MRLs are more suited to the Chinese diet composition and plantation structure.