PMFAI: WTO Needs to Form Guidelines to Determine Default MRLs for Pesticides
Pesticides Manufacturers & Formulators Association of India (PMFAI), a national association representing India’s agrochemical industry, strongly supports the Government of India’s demand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for the formulation of guidelines to determine default Maximum Residue Limits (MRLs) of pesticides, in the absence of uniform international standards.
“It has been a long-standing demand of PMFAI that assessment of MRLs need to be risk based on scientific evidences,” says PFMAI President Pradip Dave. “MRLs should not be a hazard-based approach, as is done by EU and some other nations. The recent rejections of some of India’s agricultural produce exports consignments to some countries on account of non-compliance with their MRLs, has been mainly to do with the global differences in regulations.
“First of all, MRL is not a toxicological safety standard, but only a trading standard. MRLs don’t represent unacceptable risk to public health. MRL can be as low as 0.01 ppm, which is equal to 1 gm per 100 tons of rice or any other agricultural commodity. At this level, a pesticide would not be toxicologically/biologically relevant.”
The Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (the SPS Agreement) entered into force with the establishment of the World Trade Organization on 1 January 1995. Its provisions are legally binding on all countries that are members of WTO. SPS Agreement allows WTO member countries to set their own standards for sanitary and phytosanitary measures. At the same time, it also says measures must be based on science. But the problems arise from assessing and setting standards by different countries. The EU uses unilaterally enhanced SPS measures which create trade barriers to other countries including India by imposing unreasonable standards, which are trade restrictive to exporters of developing countries. There are also some countries who blindly follow EU policies.
“While India maintains an easy-to-import regime, our agricultural exports face non-tariff barriers in the guise of SPS measures,” says Pradip Dave. “None of the Indian ports tests the imported consignments for pesticide residues before allowing them for domestic consumption. FSSAI has not created the infrastructure to enable the test under the SPS Agreement and India does not reject any imported consignments on account of MRL violation.
“This has to change and India also must subject the imported food and agri produce consignments to the same level of MRL tests that other countries subject our exported consignments. India should also reject and return the imported consignments that do not meet our MRL standards, till the time WTO frame guidelines to determine default MRLs applicable to all WTO members.”
Other countries including EU use much more pesticides than India. India is one of the lowest pesticide consuming countries in the world with 0.65 gm/hectare against the global average of 3 kg/hectare. Food and agricultural products imported from other countries would be carrying residues of pesticides that are not approved in India. India should not grant free and unchecked entry to them.
“But we expect World Trade Organization (WTO) to frame default guideline to determine MRLs and makes it applicable to countries all over the world,” Dave says. “This will provide level playing field to all countries in international trade.”
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