106. The Report of the ad hoc Working Group on Problems Relative to Pesticide Residues in Food In Developing Countries was presented by its chairperson, Dr. Cheah Uan Boh (Malaysia); Mr. David Lunn (New Zealand) acted as rapporteur.
107. Dr. Cheah introduced the referenced documents pointing out that limited availability of resources and expertise were major difficulties faced by developing countries to generate information to support the establishment of Codex MRLs for many of the minor crops with residue-related trade problems (as identified from the GEMS/Food violation data base and the 1997 questionnaire).
108. The Committee noted that the working group had welcomed the recent work of the JMPR in defining the data requirements (as outlined in section 2.5 of the 1997 JMPR Report), and agreed that relevant criteria should be used by developing countries at both the national and regional level, to generate the necessary information for submission to the JMPR to support the elaboration of Codex MRLs for the pesticide/commodity combinations causing trade problems.
109. The Committee was informed about the recent activities of the ASEAN member countries in establishing an Expert Working Group to harmonize MRLs, with protocols and principles based on those adopted by Codex, with the aim of facilitating intra and extra regional trade. The Working Group had agreed that this, and other such regional initiatives, would be valuable in making the best use of limited resources to generate the necessary information to support the establishment of Codex MRLs.
110. Dr. Cheah referred to the information provided to the working group on a number of pesticide-related activities and programmes available to assist developing countries in resolving pesticide residue problems, including various regional IPM programmes, training provided by the Training and Reference Center of FAO/IAEA in pesticide-related activities and analytical laboratory quality assurance and control, the availability of information on pesticide-related topics on the Internet and a specific session on residue analysis problems in developing countries at the next IUPAC Congress of Pesticide Chemistry.
111. The Committee:
(a) encouraged developing countries to develop and submit, either individually or through regional cooperation, the data necessary for the JMPR to propose MRLs for commodities of importance in trade, and recommended that, where appropriate, the criteria established by the JMPR for extrapolating Codex MRLs to those minor crops be used as a basis for developing these data;112. The Committee agreed that a Working Group should convene at its next Session under the chairship of Dr. Cheah.(b) invited GEMS/Food to analyze data base of residue violations in food imported into developed countries in order to extract information that could assist developing countries in identifying additional pesticide/commodity combinations for which data could be collected to support the establishment of Codex MRLs;
(c) agreed to discontinue, for the time being, further uses of the questionnaire for information collection on pesticide/commodity combinations with pesticide residue problems in trade, as there would not be much information forthcoming in response to it from developing countries; and
(d) encouraged developing countries to approach FAO for technical assistance to be provided for the establishment of MRLs in view of many such requests from developing countries.
