PESTICIDES are not highly selective and are generally toxic to many non-target species such as birds, bees, fish, wildlife, domestic animals, livestock and humans. If not correctly used, pesticides can contaminate water resources; accumulate in food and soil; damage coral reefs, cause death to fish and birds; decrease the population of non-target species and beneficial insects; cause pest resistance; contaminate air and cause health hazards for human.

Around 1,400 pesticides are used worldwide. These are toxic by nature and hence cause human and animal health hazards through exposure or dietary intake.

Human health hazards vary with the type of pesticides and also with the extent of exposure. Moderate human health hazards include mild headaches, flu, skin rashes, blurred vision and other neurological disorders. Rare severe hazard includes paralysis, blindness, and even death. Pesticides can damage human immune system by reducing the number of white blood cells and disease fighting lymphocytes. Long-run health impacts include cancer, infertility, miscarriage, male sterility, birth defects and effects on the nervous system.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approximately four million farm workers are at high risk of pesticide exposure and about 10,000-20,000 are treated every year. People living near cotton fields’ spray with insecticides had depressed level of cholinesterase.

How governments regulate food safety and environmental protection including pesticide residue levels has important implications for international trade. The World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial in Doha in November 2001included reference to standards and their impact on market access for developing countries. These issues continue to be important in follow-on trade policy dialogues. It is assumed –and evidence from recent analysis confirms – that food safety standards can affect the all of agricultural producers to meet regulatory standards set by importing countries. Studies real that a 10 per cent increase in regulatory stringency–tighter restriction on pesticide chlorpyrifos-leads to a decrease in imports by 14.8 per cent. This represents a significant impact on trade including prospects for developing countries which continue to rely on exports of agricultural commodities. In addition findings suggest that lack of consensus on international standards and divergent national regulations on pesticides is costly.

Among different agreements administered by the WTO, two have a significant impact on the practices and conditions of international food trade. These are: Agreements on the Applications of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) and Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT). Food safety standards are measures of compliance regulations enacted by governments to protect the health and safety of their citizens and the environment in which they live..

The TBT agreements apply to all aspects of food standards, which are not covered by the SPS agreement. It seeks to ensure that technical regulations and standards for foods, including packaging, marking and labeling requirements and procedures for assessing conformity with technical regulations and standards, do not create unnecessary obstacles to international trade.

Universally accepted standards should also guide exporters to the expectations of importers concerning food quality and safe leading to reduction in trade frictions. Standards can serve to signal quality in foreign markets and thus contribute to increasing elasticity of substitution between similar goods produced in different countries, thereby permitting relatively more efficient producers to thrive through export expansion.

In recent years processed food exports to developed countries have emerged a potentially major new source of dynamic export growth for many developing countries. However, exploiting this potential poses many challenges. In particular, the capacity of developed country exporters to penetrate these markets depends critically on their ability to meet increasingly more stringent food safety standards imposed in developed countries.

Not only are these standards typically much higher than those prevailing in developing countries and often difficult and costly to meet, but they are also subject to frequent changes. Such changes are to be expected, given advances in scientific knowledge about health hazards, improvements in food processing technology and the highly income-elastic consumer preferences for high safety standards.

The existing food safety standards have been designed by industrial countries to reflect their technology mix and consumer preferences. Upgrading existing standards for developing new ones and performing risk assessments is a costly and difficult procedure and is neither technically feasible nor economically affordable for most developing countries.

Resource, manpower and institutional constraints are naturally more binding for developing country exporters compared to their developed country counterparts. The studies clearly show the incidence of detention is greater on developing country imports relative to their trading significance compared to developed countries.

Most detentions of imports from the developing countries are for “Insanitariness” (contamination with insects and rodent filth), followed by microbiological contamination, acidification and pesticide residue violations. In other words, developing countries seem to face considerable problems in meeting even basic food hygiene requirements and not only standards that require more sophisticated monitoring and therefore more costly procedure (such as limits of pesticide residues and heavy metals).

This highlights the importance of ensuring that standards are met and the need for setting up pesticide residue laboratories for assessing pesticide residues in food, fruits, vegetables and economic crops and other agricultural commodities; to provide pesticide residue assessment services to meet the WTO and international quality standards; to assess the pesticide residues in imported food items and agricultural commodities at the time of need; to study the biodegradation of pesticides in soil and water; to monitor the pesticide residues in fruits, vegetables and other commodities at market level; to determine the withholding period for different pesticides.

In Pakistan only one pesticide residue laboratory has been established at Kala Shah Kaku in Punjab in 2004 but an important sector of local and foreign training on pesticide residue analysis and techniques of research staff has been ignored, without which no tangible results can be achieved.

Countries will have improved access to export markets but this improved access will be accompanied by greater competition. Food safety will play an important role in facilitating penetration into these markets and staying firm in face of competitors. National food control systems aiming at protecting consumers against health hazards and fraudulent practices need to be based on statutory framework supported by administrative officers, inspectors and analysis with adequate laboratories and other facilities needed for effective administration of the legislation.

Governments must ensure that the legislative base to their food control system is adequate and scientifically based. Food safety must be integrated along the entire food chain, from farm to fork. But for this to be achieved countries should work on improving the hygienic quality of food stuffs at the agri/aquacultual level by applying the principles of good agri/aquacultual practices and animal husbandry and by improving the environmental conditions under which animals and plants are grown.

The current international agreements require that the certifications of pesticide residue contents of commodities moving in international trade are provided by laboratories implementing appropriate quality control and quality assurance system. In addition residue data provided to support the establishment of Codex Maximum Residue Limits required a country’s good agriculture practice (GAP) should be derived from supervised field performed according to the Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) principles. The laboratories should be familiar with the principles of ISO Guide 17025 and GLP if they wish to produce internationally acceptable results. This requires intensive practical and theoretical trainings.