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Thailand struggles to meet EU MRLs
Sep. 4, 2008
Thailand’s pesticide residue controls require further improvement to meet EU standards, the European Commission’s Food and Veterinary Office (FVO) says. An FVO mission in March 2008 found that the evaluation controls on residues in Thailand had progressed since 2006, but they still could not guarantee that food of plant origin exported from Thailand complied with EU legislation. The Thai Department of Agriculture has since responded to the recommendations made by the FVO concerning the export controls.
The Office concluded that since the last mission, although substantial training in the use of plant protection products was provided to all stakeholders, and “documented procedures for planning, performing and reporting of controls had been improved”, no GAP manuals were available for many of the export commodities. In addition, the FVO found that the system for mandatory export certification of consignments intended for export to the EU was not fully effective, as it did not include the commodities recently notified in the EU Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF), in particular for yard-long beans, and was limited to only 30 pesticides. It found that export certificates were not checked at point of export, although new legal provisions were expected to rectify this shortcoming. There were 24 notifications to the RASFF for residues in vegetables imported from Thailand since 2006, the FVO notes.
The FVO also reviewed the laboratory services, stating that only two of the five laboratories involved in pesticide residue analysis for EU export certification had achieved accreditation, and that the analytical scope of testing in pesticide residue laboratories was too small.
The Thai competent authority, the Department of Agriculture of the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, states that existing GAP manuals will be revised by October 2008, taking into consideration the EU pesticide maximum residue limits (MRLs), and all GAP manuals will be completed by 2009 after research has been carried out. It will also extend the list of commodities requiring pesticide residue certification to include yard-long beans, Chinese cabbages, Chinese broccoli, and coriander by October 2008, as recommended by the FVO. The Department says that it will ensure the accreditation process of official laboratories is completed by January 2010. Finally, the Department agrees to broaden the scope of analytes sought in pesticide residue laboratories to cover the carbamate group (carbofuran, carbaryl, carbofuran, isoprocarb, methiocarb, methomyl and promecarb) by December 2008.
Source: Agrow
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