MONTREAL — The organization that sets maximum residue limits for pesticides in many countries is grossly underfunded and swamped with applications, says Pulse Canada.
That should concern farmers in exporting countries because billions of dollars in global crop trade are placed in jeopardy when maximum residue limits don’t exist for the pesticides that are used to grow those crops.
There have already been trade problems involving Canadian beans and lentils.
The Codex Alimentarius Commission develops MRLs for countries that can’t afford to do it on their own, which applies to most countries.
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Canada conducts $900 million of annual pulse trade with nations that follow the Codex standards. Emerging markets such as India, Pakistan, Brazil and Colombia all rely on Codex.
“So it’s a huge portion of our crop that’s going to these countries,” said Mark Goodwin, pest management co-ordinator with Pulse Canada.
The European Union recently passed legislation demanding their regulators follow Codex unless there is a real good reason not to.
“It makes it more important to get Codex working,” said Goodwin.
He has witnessed firsthand the Codex meetings where MRLs are established and is shocked by what he has seen.
“The things that you have to realize about this (maximum residue limits) system is number one, it’s volunteers, number two, they are swamped with (maximum residue limits) and number three, the process involves a protracted series of steps that could take years,” Goodwin told delegates attending the Canadian Special Crops Association’s recent annual meeting.
One of the key Codex committees can set maximum residue limits for only 10 active ingredients per year. It is backlogged to 2016 with applications.
Almost all of the funding for the process comes from the United States, and that money is drying up.
Goodwin said it is a “hand-the-hat-around” process to book hotel rooms for the volunteer experts tasked with setting the MRLs. A 60 percent funding decrease means one committee will have no money to meet next year.
“It’s a huge amount of dollars that are governed by Codex, essentially by a system that is in near crisis,” he said.
Canada needs to convince other grain exporting nations of the threat to international trade if the Codex system isn’t fixed.
“The Codex process is hitting the wall as we speak,” said Goodwin.
Wealthy countries need to speed up the process by properly funding Codex and encouraging the organization to eliminate duplication and abandon its policy of refusing to review an active ingredient until it is registered in an exporting country.
The system will take some time to fix. In the meantime, Canada should be self-monitoring to see what levels of pesticides exist in the crops it exports.
The Canadian Grain Commission has done so in the past and found that 99.99 percent of the shipments had no pesticide residue.
