FAO Council Okays Code On Hazards Of Pesticides
ROME — A new international code of conduct calling on exporters of pesticides to warn importers of their potential hazards has been approved by the Rome-based UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
The code, which has taken four years to draft, is viewed as a compromise between the pesticides industry, international public interest groups, and the governments of development and developed countries, as it calls on both makes and buyers of pesticides to adhere to strict standards regarding pesticide use.
The new 14-page “International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides” mandates that advertising of pesticides focus on “special precautions for children and pregnant women, the danger of re-using containers and the importance of following label directions.”
The pesticide industry should ensure that the active ingredients of pesticides marketed “correspond in identity, quality, purity, and composition to the substances tested” for toxicity and environmental impact, according to the code.
The code was passed unanimously after several days of debate at the FAO’s two-week governing council which ended Friday evening.
It will be of value “particularly where there is no adequate national law to regulate pesticides,” according to the text released by FAO.
Pressure for the adoption of such a code has come from public interest groups and from importing countries that have criticized the export to developing countries of pesticides which have been banned in the countries where they are produced.
“But valid and adequate toxicological reasons justifying banning a product are of concern thought not necessarily of equal importance to most countries,” the code says.
“The fact that a product is not used or registered in a particular exporting country is not necessarily a valid reason for prohibiting the export of that pesticide,” it adds.
“The contents of the code have been the subject of intense negotiations,” FAO’s Director-General Edouard Saouma said. “It will fully satisfy neither the bluest blood of free enterprise nor the greenest sap of environmentalism.
Delegates at the Council session expressed relief that a consensus had been reached on the code. Some, however, voiced reservations over certain clauses.
Delegates from Pakistan viewed the code as an interim measure to persuade pesticide companies to “assume some responsibility for promoting the safe and efficient use of often legal pesticides” while the “vulnerable developing countries” receiving those products set up regulations to control their use. But he also called for greater emphasis in the code on the development of pest control systems that combined biological with chemical methods.
“This should include the re-discovery of organic pesticides and of traditional cultural practices used for pest control, such as crop rotation, flooding of rise stubbles and uprooting of maize stuffs,” said Pakistan delegate Javed Musharraf.
The delegates from India, where a chemical plant disaster killed 2,000 people, requested that “storage” be included under the recommendations for pesticide manufacturing, marketing, labeling, packaging, and use.
Millicent Fenwick, the U.S. special Ambassador to the UN food agencies, asked for clarification of a clause in the text that called for the testing of the effectiveness of a pesticide on side before its sale.
“My government very much supports the idea of this code and as you know we have been very anxious to see it through,” said Fenwick. But she added it was “not sensible” in certain emergency situations to require the on-site testing of a pesticide when it had been tested in a “similar place.”
The code, which is directed to governments and to traders and manufacturers of pesticides in both exporting and importing countries, stresses that developing nations set up a “pesticide registration and control scheme” immediately. It also calls for increased care in avoiding possible contamination of food items stored with pesticides and for authorities to ensure that “where pesticides are available through outlets which also deal in… medicines… or clothing, they should be physically separated from other merchandise.”
The code will be presented for ratification at the 156-member FAO Conference in November. The FAO Council, with 49 members, is the agency’s interim governing body between the biennial meetings of the FAO conference.
The International Courier
June 1985