Chinese Standards Raised

Matt Hopkins Posted by Matt Hopkins|20 February 2008

An article from the Royal Society of Chemistry highlights recent changes to China’s chemical standards to ensure that the country’s agrochemical manufacturers are up to international standards.

Between December and January, the article states that China’s Ministry of Agriculture released six separate regulations on pesticides, including legislation to phase out highly toxic substances like methamidophos, and submitted a new list of labs approved to carry out environmental toxicology.

Chen Tiechun, the official charged with managing the compliance of agrochemicals with Good Laboratory Practice (GLP), said in January that China would apply to join the OECD’s GLP management system. Chen, who is based at the Ministry of Agriculture’s Institute for the Control of Agrochemicals, hopes China’s bid to join the scheme would be accepted. “The domestic trial GLP rules for agrochemicals released in late 2006 already refer to a lot of stipulations in the OECD standards,” he explained.

The current lack of GLP standards is holding back the growth of China’s agrochemical industry, Chen believes. Of the 1,700 different pesticides exported by China in 2005, only 80, or 4.7%, are branded end products. The balance are raw materials for importing countries to use in formulating pesticides.

Cai Leiming, a senior researcher at the Shenyang Institute of Chemical Technology, said in the article that while there are differences between Chinese agrochemicals and those made in OECD countries, the biggest problem is the lack of standard procedures for labs to follow.

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With stricter checks in place to ensure experimental data is collected and recorded properly, China could also prevent fraud, Leiming said. However, forcing pesticide manufacturers to use GLP-certified labs would increase their costs potentially driving smaller producers out of business or forcing them to consolidate. But Leiming believes this is unavoidable if Chinese pesticides are to meet international standards.