Did mainland pressure cause new food safety laws to exempt three pesticides?

According to the Food and Health Bureau, the decision to exempt three pesticides from a new food safety law — triphenyltin hydroxide, fosetyl aluminium and thidiazuron — has nothing to do with “giving in” to the mainland. The Bureau justified its decision by saying that the mainland and the United States differed over how to define residue limits, but did not specify which country had the lower limits.

The bureau was criticised for giving in to the mainland, as its decision followed advice from the mainland’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, which had also pointed out a lack of international consensus in regulating the three chemicals. Professor Chan King-ming, of the School of Life Sciences at Chinese University, said the move “was definitely related to the pressure from the mainland”.

Source: SCMP

Photo: Walmart, Flickr



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