Global Minor Use Portal

The First Global Minor
Use Summit: Striving
Toward Harmonization

Nearly 300 people, representing 60 countries, registered for the first Global Minor Use Summit, which was hosted by the Food Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and held at their headquarters in Rome, Italy. The week-long event, focusing on pesticide use on Specialty or Minor Crops, took place from December third through the seventh, 2007 and was jointly organized through FAO, the USDA Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the USDA / IR-4 Project (IR-4).

The need for a global discussion stems from trade barriers due to the inconsistencies of minor crop pesticide residue standards amongst nations. IR-4 Executive Director, Jerry Baron, stated, “The purpose of the Summit is to develop a basis for future cooperation by focusing on a global agreement in pesticide policy, procedure and methodology. The overriding goal of this cooperation is to promote free and fair trade between nations.”

The Summit agenda included presentations on the first day with topics focusing on the current state of specialty crop program initiatives and challenges from regional, grower and business perspectives. Day two focused on technical initiatives and challenges, cooperation and policy considerations, with the third day putting participants to work in break-out sessions where they collaborated to provide practical recommendations for action. The final day and a half was dedicated to training sessions covering Good Laboratory Practices and data review procedures.

The outcome of the first Global Minor Use Summit included the following :

Global Minor Use Summit Action and Follow-up Items

Information - Develop a common portal consisting of links to national data and information websites including (but not limited to):

A Portal Committee has been established to manage the development of the GMUS web based portal.

Capacity Building

• Biopesticide/Reduced Risk pesticides
• Multi-lateral review efforts
• Regional coordination and cooperation
• Data generation (field trials, laboratory analysis, development of submission documents)

USDA-Foreign Agriculture Service (USDA-FAS) is currently scheduling some Capacity Building programs. The first set of courses will occur in mid-2008 in Africa. Jason Sandahl of USDA-FAS is acting as focal point.

Establish a Working Group on Specialty Crops and Minor Uses - Member countries of Codex will be urged to facilitate the establishment of the Codex Working Group on Specialty Crops and Minor Uses with the objectives of:

• Increased number of Codex MRLs for specialty crops and minor uses
• Support Codex in revising Codex Classification of Food and Animal Feeds including the consideration of the concept of representative crops

This working group has been established.

International Collaborations/Pilot Projects

• Explore the concept of a simultaneous JMPR and national review to facilitate the establishment of JMPR recommendations prior to national MRLs
• Investigate the reason for differences in national and Codex MRLs for a specific pesticide/crop combination
• Create a crop specific database for a limited number of crops of global interest that contains a listing of use authorizations and existing residue trials
• Using supervised residue trials to compare residues between regions to support the concept of global zoning

Efforts to start Pilot Projects (PP) C & D are occurring. The structure for database to handle PP-C has been provided by UK’s Pesticide Safety Doctorate. A project to populate the database will be discussed at OECD Expert Group of Minor Uses. IR-4 Project has secured funding for PP-D from USDA-FAS. It is anticipated that the first field trials will be out in 2008.

Global Minor Use Summit II in early 2010

• Focus program on commodity based pest management issues utilizing results from Action Items 1-4 (above) as identified at the first Global Minor Use Summit

Tangible results should have been achieved before Summit II, furthermore it was proposed this Summit should give emphasis to “efficacy issues, e.g. trial protocol, and data exchange”.