By Fang Lin on Tuesday, 1 April 2014 in Agrochemical News 

According to the MoA, the ministry and the NHFPC has jointly issued the “Maximum Residue Limits for Pesticide in Food (GB2763-2014)”. As the unique and compulsory food safety standard in China, GB 2763-2014 consists of 3,650 limits of 387 pesticide active ingredients, which is a significant increase from the MRL standard in 2012 of just 2,293 limits.

MoA stressed that the “most stringent food safety standard in history” was set to minimize the dietary risk to the public and the international competition for its agricultural produce. The advantages of the GB 2763-2014 were also compared to the GB 2763-2012:

* The 3,650 limits were set for 12 categories and 284 kinds of food commodity, a noticeable expansion upon the 2012 version, in which limits of 10 categories and 284 kinds of food were provided. The primary produce such as fruit juice and dried fruit will firstly be subject to Chinese MRLs;

* MRLs of 65 pesticide active ingredients have firstly been established into the standard, which enlarge the number of subject active ingredients to 387. As crop protection solutiondiffer with regions and crops, there are around 350 active ingredients applied in China. Thus the GB 2763-2014 will cover nearly all pesticide treated crops and agricultural produces;

* With the fresh–keeping commodity become the worst-hit areas of MRL violation, GB 2736-2014 set 2,495 limits for 115 kinds of vegetable and 85 kinds of fruit and over two thirds of the newly added MRLs are for fresh-keeping commodity, 483 limits for fruit and 431 limits for vegetable( including edible fungus);

* Of all the limits in GB 2763-2014, 1,999 limits coincide with the Codex Alimentarius (CAC) standards;  1,811 of them are equivalent or above the CAC standards. MoA admitted that all these limits have been reported and would be subject to the comment and review of other WTO members;

The GB 2763-2014 will take effect as of August 1 2014 and its predecessor, the GB 2763-2012 will be repealed simultaneously.