Potential tightening in Korean pesticide controls elicits concerns

Japanese pesticide makers could be dealt a severe blow if information that South Korea was moving to model its pesticide-registration system on that of the EU came to pass. Nearly half of the pesticides used in the country are believed to originate Japan.

The South Korean plant-protection association reported the information at the 25th trilateral meeting of the Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese pesticide industries held in Sendai. It said that country was considering adopting a system along the lines of the EU’s Annex I pesticide-evaluation system. By doing so, 35 effective ingredients that had been registered as pesticides in South Korea but were not included in Annex I’s list of allowed pesticide effective ingredients, recognized as acceptable by every EU member country, would become unacceptable in South Korea.

Moreover, the plan was to set the maximum residue limits of 33 chemical compounds that neither in the Annex I list nor registered in South Korea to “below the detection limitation,” meaning that farm products in which even the smallest amounts of these chemicals were detected would be barred from the market.

The South Korean pesticide industry is similarly feeling the heat, and the South Korean association is negotiating with the country’s administrators to refrain from abruptly changing to the new system. It is said to be asking for the present system to remain in place, citing the fact that the local pesticide industry was different from that of Europe.

Changes also are afoot in Taiwan’s pesticide-registration system. According to the Taiwanese plant-protection association, its government has decided to come up with new categories for farm products and carry out efficacy and residue testing according to these new categories. In addition, farm products exempted from application have been imposed a maximum residue limit of 0.01 ppm, a regulation that is creating problems for the industry. As a countermeasure the government is planning to set maximum residue limits according to its new farm-product categories and to introduce in three years a labeling system to display the maximum residue limits on packaging of each crop.

Their Japanese counterpart updated the Sendai meeting on the progress of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forest and Fisheries’ ongoing modification of Japanese’s pesticide-registration system.