AgroPages-A third of Chinese agchems fail quality tests in Guangdong-Agricultural news

Some 31% of pesticides tested in Guangdong province, China, in the first half of 2008 do not meet quality standards, reports the Guangdong provincial government’s industrial and commercial bureau. The bureau investigated pesticide products on sale in Guangdong with either high market presence or suspected quality issues from 21 leading agrochemical manufacturers. Some 162 pesticides were quality tested, of which 112 (69.1%) passed inspection, compared with last year’s inspection pass rate of 72.3%. Of the 50 pesticides that failed inspection, 14 were classified as having “serious quality issues”. Herbicides performed most poorly, with only 66.7% passing inspection, a fall of 24.2 percentage points from the second half of 2007.

The list of 14 pesticides classified as having “serious quality issues” included: Shengfeng Technology’s insecticide/acaricide, SAEF, which was found to contain irregular levels of the active ingredients, profenofos and phoxim; Gengreen’s insecticide/acaricide, Zhiwu long, which was found to contain irregular levels of the ais, abamectin and chlorpyrifos, and was also labelled incorrectly; and Shandong Songgang Chemical’s insecticide/acaricide, Mifang, which was found to contain irregular levels of cypermethrin, and was also labelled incorrectly.