Dr Canice Nolan, head of pesticides at the European Commission, attended a Freshfel meeting last week at which he gave an update on progress with the EC review of active ingredients and maximum residue levels (MRLs). He confirmed what we have suspected about this review process.

In the end there will be about 250 actives supported and approved for use within the EU. This means that approximately 600 unsupported actives will be withdrawn and their MRLs set at zero. However many of these unsupported actives will continue to be used overseas on fresh produce destined for the EU.

Where there is no EC MRL the legislation allows for import tolerances to be set for supported actives as well as those unsupported actives that have been withdrawn. However to set an import tolerance the active must have a full toxicological data package.

The problem is that supported actives have this data and will be able to obtain an import tolerance while the 600 unsupported actives seem not to have the necessary data and as a consequence will not be able to obtain an import tolerance.

At the moment there is a lot of activity to address the needs of EU production by setting temporary MRLs for the supported actives. On the import side there appears to be very little activity to set import tolerances for either supported actives that do not have the necessary EC MRLs or unsupported actives all of whose MRLs will be set at zero.

This is an unsustainable situation and, unless effective action is taken, will lead to a major crisis for imported products (remember 2-4D). Following the publication of the 4th edition of our code of practice for the control of pesticides, the FPC is developing a detailed strategy for supermarkets and importers to help address this situation.