EU Blocks Rice Imports
1 October 2010 The EU has been a regulatory war zone in the past five years complete with re-evaluations of pesticides that have already been rigorously tested and new food-safety requirements that seem to vary by country.
| Still Active In The EU? Europe’s Directive 91/414 mandated the re-registration of 981 active ingredients that had registrations by 1993. The result thus far is a severly reduced availability of pesticide options for farmers. |
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| Group | Original number | In | Out | Pending |
| 1 | 90 | 58 | 32 | |
| 2 | 148 | 31 | 117 | |
| 3 | 404 | 250 | 154 | |
| 4 | 339 | 201 | 138 | |
| Totals | 981 | 89 | 600 | 292 |
| (100%) | (9.1%) | (61.1%) | (29.8%) | |
| Source: European Commision, DIrector-General for Health and Consumers | ||||
Most recently, Germany has halted the importation of Indian basmati rice since June, prompting Indian exporters to urge the European Commission to re-examine its thresholds and the consistency of its policy.
The imported rice was tagged with 0.03% level of carbendazim and isoprothiolane according to a lab in Hamburg. The EU fixed an arbitrary maximum residue limit (MRL) of 0.01 part per million.
In conjunction with the re-registration process in the EU that is setting parameters over endocrine disruption and moves to assess chemistries on hazard-based criteria instead of more scientific risk-based criteria, the EU is implementing a defacto ban on imports that could harm trade ties with its trade partners.
“It is evident that science is being abandoned in the question of hazard versus risk. Emotion and politics are coming to define what is considered by regulators as safe food, rather than science,” AgroCare President Román Macaya told attendees of the FCI Trade Summit in Mexico. AgroCare is a global generic pesticides advocacy group.
Macaya says MRLs that should be accepted international CODEX standards are being seriously undermined by arbitrary lowering of MRLs in some countries without any scientific rationale.
The limiting of imports in Europe could contribute to the rising cost of food in the EU, especially as export limitations on grains from Black Sea producers continue to proliferate amid the region’s worst drought in a century.
According to the British Retail Consortium, wheat prices alone have risen by 60% in the trailing 12 months, and food inflation could hit 7% by the end of the year — the highest rate since 2008, when food riots erupted around the world.
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