Bureau denies plan to cancel toxic pesticide ban is 'health risk'
'No risk to public' in exempting pesticides from food safety law after regulator's advice
A proposal to exclude three pesticides from a new food safety law was made following a recommendation from a mainland regulator, the Food and Health Bureau has admitted.
But the practices of other countries were also taken into account and the proposal was not intended to accommodate mainland Chinese standards only, the bureau said.
It dismissed suggestions that the move posed a health risk to Hongkongers.
"It is true that the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine has recommended us to cancel [limits on] the three substances," deputy secretary Philip Chan Kwan-yee told the Legislative Council food and health panel yesterday.
"But other stakeholders from places such as Canada and the United States have also given us comments. The amendment was not made to accommodate the requirements of one place; it is to internationalise our standards."
The new food safety law, Pesticide Residues in Food Regulation, was passed in Legco in June 2012, and the bureau is making amendments to the regulations before it takes effect in August.
Mainland China and the US had different restrictions on three vegetable pesticides - triphenyltin hydroxide, fosetyl-aluminium and thidiazuron. The bureau found that this would cause difficulties in laboratory tests and hence proposed exempting the chemicals from the law after conducting a risk assessment.
Lawmakers said that not imposing any limits was a "backward" move and would expose the city to the risk of toxic food.
They lambasted the bureau for failing to provide data on the amount of food imports that contained the three chemicals.
Triphenyltin hydroxide, used as a fungicide on potatoes and pecans, can cause cancer in animals. But the bureau says it poses only a "minimal" risk, as a 60kg person would have to consume 360g of potatoes containing triphenyltin hydroxide every day over a long time for it to pose a hazard to health.
