India missing from pesticide norm seeker group at WTO

NEW DELHI: Argentina, supported by a number of developing countries, has urged the other countries to agree on common international standards for pesticide residues in food and to apply those standards or justify tougher requirements by supplying scientific evidence.

The call was made in a recent meeting of the sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures committee of the World Trade Organization (WTO) which deals with food safety and animal and plant health and safety.

The move was aimed at discouraging developed countries to come up with increasingly stringent standards continually without any scientific justification. Such standards act as non-tariff barriers for products from developing countries which do not have enough resources to meet the testing requirements.

Supporting Argentina were Chile, Cuba, Brazil, Pakistan, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Paraguay. Interestingly, India, which recently was witness to controversy over alleged high pesticide content in soft drinks manufactured by multinationals, was not part of the developing country grouping.

The countries urged the international standard-setting body, the joint FAO-WHO Codex Alimentarius Commission on food safety, to set more standards and the importing countries to use these international standards or to provide scientific evidence to support any stricter requirements. Argentina said that out of 345 principal pesticide substances registered in Argentina, only about 32% have maximum residue levels agreed in Codex. It complained that some requirements are so low they are at the limits of the ability to detect residues.

In recent months, about one-third of all SPS notifications from WTO member governments have been about new or revised pesticide requirements — about 37 out of 98 notifications in May 2007, and 23 out of 78 in April refer to pesticide.