On 6 Dec 2012, China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Health co-published the “Maximum Residue Limits for Pesticides in Food(GB2763-2012)”, which will be uniquely and compulsorily implemented from 1 Mar 2013. Meanwhile, other 6 national standards and 10 industrial standards regarding pesticide MRLs will be repealed from then on.

The new MRLs standard contains 2293 limits for 322 ais on 10 categories of commodities and foods. The establishment was more tailored to the Chinese dietary and all of the 2293 limits were developed based on the risk assessment results and the data collected from the field trials and residual monitors in China.

The newly released standard is characterized by the following,

• Most of MRLs in the new standard are prescribed for the fresh commodities such as the fruits and vegetables.

• MRLs for crop classes and primary agriculture products were firstly introduced.

• Limits for re-residue of the persistent pesticides such as aldrin were covered.

• Test methods for the residuals on the commodities were prepared for better supervision of agricultural commodities, which might deter the illegal and excessive uses of pesticides in China’s crop protection market.

Reference Links

• MoA’s News Release (in Chinese)

• MoH and MoA’s Announcement 22 of 2012(in Chinese)

• GB2763-2012(Download in Chinese)

• [Sample]GB2763-2012(Download in English)