Food safety and agricultural health

Pesticide Management and Risk Reduction

FAO is the leading international organization in assisting member countries to improve their agricultural pesticide management and to design and implement policies and programmes to reduce the risk presented by pesticides.

Of special concern are countries and areas where conditions of life and work result in higher risk to pesticides.

The tools used by the FAO for assisting member countries in managing their pesticides and reducing their risk include:

1. International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides

The International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides is the a voluntary code adopted for the first time in 1985 by the twenty fifth session of the FAO conference. The code is designed to provide conduct standards and practice managements and to serve as a reference for  government authorities  as well as the pesticides industry. The Code’s objectives are to establish conduct standards, particularly in the cases in that there is no national legislation to regulate pesticides or where the one that exist is inadequate or insufficient.

The code is designed to be used within the context of national legislation as it base, so that governmental authorities, the pesticides manufacturers, those involved with pesticide commerce and all involved with pesticides, can judge if the actions that they propose or the actions of others constitute acceptable or correct practices.

The environmental impact and associated risks of health for the use pesticides  are being reduced with  putting in practice programs that include: establishing standard laboratory methods for analysis of pesticide residues, the prevention and elimination of obsolete pesticides and exchange of information on current pesticide control activities.

International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides

2. Rotterdam Convention

The text of the Convention was adopted on 10 September 1998 by a Conference of Plenipotentiaries in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The Convention entered into force on 24 February 2004.

The objectives of the Convention are:

• to promote shared responsibility and cooperative efforts among Parties in the international trade of certain hazardous chemicals in order to protect human health and the from potential harm;

• to contribute to the environmentally sound use of those hazardous chemicals, by facilitating information exchange about their characteristics, by providing for a national decision-making process on their import and export and by disseminating these decisions to Parties.

The Convention creates legally binding obligations for the implementation of the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure. The PIC is a procedure that specially aims to help developing countries, of have difficulties to supervise and have control over the imports. If a country member, to which in general reference like a State Part, decides not to concern the import of a chemical agent or pesticide included by procedure PIC, other States Parts decide not to contribute this product to that country. If a country decides to limit the import of a chemical agent for certain uses, the exporting countries decide to respect those limits. The PIC can contribute, to not only reduce accidents, but also to prevent the accumulation of obsolete or unwanted pesticides.

	Texto del Convenio
	Portal del Convenio de Rotterdam
	Puntos Focales Convenio de Rótterdam

3. Specific Work Areas in Pesticide Management

1. Prevention and Elimination of Obsolete Pesticides
   
   In developing countries worldwide there are enormous amounts of toxic and obsolete pesticides, that are a mortal danger for the human health and the environment, the situation is comparable with a "time bomb". Calculates indicate that in the world there are many hundreds of thousands of tons of obsolete pesticides, prohibited, disturbed or dangerous and more than 100 thousand tons of that volume it is in developing countries.
   
   Obsolete pesticides often wind up in the hands on those least informed, protected, or with resources to eliminate the dangerous substances.  Often containers are abandoned, be they in a government warehouse or in the back-yard shed, only to deteriorate, exposing the pesticides the humans and the environment.  Often the legal responsibility for the proper elimination of these hazards is not clearly determined or enforced.  Yet even worse are situations where inadequate policies or management result in ever-growing stocks of dangerous obsolete pesticides.

   Página web del programa de Prevención y Eliminación de Plaguicidas Obsoletos

   
   

   Final workshop  Project TCP/ PAR/3002:  Assistance  forremoval and disposal of obsolete pesticides and strategies of prevention of new accumulations (all documents in Spanish).
   
   

   	Taller de capacitación en la elaboración de inventario de plaguicidas obsoletos
   	Supervisión de tareas de salvaguarda de plaguicidas obsoletos
   	Proyecto OFAT
   	Curso de capacitación sobre tareas de salvaguarda de plaguicidas obsoletos
   	Estudio de plaguicidas obsoletos en Paraguay

2. Pesticide Specifications (FAO/WHO)
   
   The FAO and the WHO specifications are elaborated with the basic objective to promote, as far as possible, that the manufacture, distribution and use of pesticides fulfill the basic requirements of quality.
   
   The term "pesticide" is considered to embrace active ingredients in any form, irrespective of whether, or to what extent, they have been formulated for application. The term is usually associated with materials intended to kill or control pests (insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, etc.) but, for the present purposes, it also embraces certain materials to control the behaviour or physiology of pests (e.g. insect repellents and insect growth regulators) or of crops during production or storage.
   
   FAO and WHO specifications relate only to pesticides produced by manufacturers whose data on those pesticides have been evaluated as satisfactory by the FAO/WHO Joint Meeting on Pesticide Specifications (JMPS).
   
   The specifications encompass the physical appearance of the material, its content of active ingredient and any relevant impurities, and its physical properties.
   
   FAO’s Regional office provides technical assistance to member countries in the determination of their own pesticide standards, which can then be used in a system of registration of pesticides within countries, based on the determination of “equivalence”. A regional training was facilitated by FAO RLC jointly with the Comunidad Andina de la Naciones, in November, 2007 on the determination of pesticide specifications and their use in registry programmes.  

3. Pesticide Residue Limits in Food (FAO/WHO)
   
   Pesticide use invariably generates problems of pesticide residues, in both the environment and in food.  FAO works with the World Health Organization in a joint committee to determine recommended pesticide residue limits for food.  These recommendations are used by the Codex Commission in their decisions regarding adopting internationally-recognized limits for pesticide residues in food.
   
   Joint Meeting FAO/WHO on Residues of pesticides (JMPR) is an international group of scientific experts, jointly administered by the FAO and the WHO, that every year reuniting from 1963 to make scientific evaluations of pesticides Residues in foods. Adviser to the Committee of the Codex on Residues of pesticides (CCPR) in relation to the establishment of maximum limits of Residues of pesticides in foods and grass destined to the international trade. The JMPR is formed by experts coming from the governments and of academic circles. They attend in quality of independent recognized international specialists level, who participates in a personal view and not like representatives of the national governments.
   
   FAO participates in a number of committees with WHO and other partners (UNEP, UNCTAD, UNITAR, etc.) to produce guidelines, recommendations, and assist in capacity-building for national programs to reduce risks from pesticides.

   	Pesticide Limit Residues in Food
   	Food Quality and Standards Service  FAO  web page