Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Caribbean gov­ern­ments must en­sure food safe­ty in the re­gion is not com­pro­mised as they in­crease food pro­duc­tion to meet grow­ing con­sumer de­mands.So said Gregg Rawl­ins, the In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co-op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture (IICA) rep­re­sen­ta­tive in T&T, as he stressed the need to mon­i­tor pes­ti­cide use in food pro­duc­tion.

Rawl­ins, ad­dress­ing the for­mal open­ing of the 18th meet­ing of the Co-or­di­nat­ing Group of Pes­ti­cides Con­trol Boards of the Caribbean (CG­PC) at Cara Suites, Clax­ton Bay, on Mon­day, said gov­ern­ments need­ed to en­sure con­sumer health and food safe­ty by fo­cus­ing on the adop­tion of good agri­cul­tur­al and man­u­fac­tur­ing prac­tices.

"Food con­t­a­m­i­na­tion by pes­ti­cide residues is of ma­jor pub­lic health and food safe­ty con­cern. It is there­fore im­por­tant that the im­por­ta­tion and use of pes­ti­cides are prop­er­ly reg­u­lat­ed and mon­i­tored," he said.Rawl­ins said con­sumers are de­mand­ing food that is safer and more whole­some and IICA recog­nis­es that in or­der to achieve in­creased pro­duc­tion, some lev­els of pes­ti­cides have to be used in the food pro­duc­tion process.

How­ev­er, he said, "We have to adopt sys­tems, good agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices and good man­u­fac­tur­ing prac­tices to al­low our prod­ucts to be of such qual­i­ty that con­sumers feel con­fi­dent that they can con­sume them and there are no neg­a­tive ef­fects or haz­ardous ef­fects on their health."Rawl­ins said good prac­tices would ad­dress the very is­sue of pes­ti­cide man­age­ment and the re­gion's abil­i­ty to com­pete with in­ter­na­tion­al food sup­pli­ers.

He said if re­gion­al coun­tries are go­ing to com­pete with im­port­ed prod­ucts, of­fer com­pet­i­tive trad­ing both with­in the re­gion and ex­tra-re­gion­al­ly and met mar­ket re­quire­ments, "they are go­ing to have to adopt in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards."Rawl­ins said while the re­gion has leg­is­la­tion to mon­i­tor and reg­u­late the use of pes­ti­cides and tox­ic chem­i­cals, "We al­so need to fo­cus a lit­tle more on the leg­is­la­tion in the area of food safe­ty.

"While we do have an­i­mal health and plant health (leg­is­la­tion) in some in­stances food safe­ty leg­is­la­tion is not as up to date as they should be and it is the leg­isla­tive frame­work that pro­vides and op­por­tu­ni­ty for you to act and en­force," he said.Rawl­ins warned, "If coun­tries in the re­gion do not have the nec­es­sary pes­ti­cide con­trol boards and ad­e­quate leg­is­la­tion in place then we face the risk of be­ing the dump­ing ground for banned and ob­so­lete chem­i­cals."

On Mon­day, Grena­da passed the chair­man­ship of CG­PC to T&T, which would be held by T&T's Reg­is­trar of the Pes­ti­cides and Tox­ic Chem­i­cals Con­trol Board, Has­math Ali.Ali said as the new chair he in­tend­ed to con­tin­ue the work of the pre­vi­ous chair and one of his main roles "would be to har­monise ap­proach­es with­in the re­gion for the man­age­ment of chem­i­cals."

Dr Clive Tilluck­d­har­ry, Min­istry of Health spe­cial­ist med­ical of­fi­cer, In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion, told re­gion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the start of the five-day con­fer­ence, themed "Pro­mot­ing Safer Pest Man­age­ment Ini­tia­tives in the Re­gion," that eco­nom­ic ad­van­tages de­rived from pes­ti­cides and tox­ic chem­i­cals were sig­nif­i­cant, "but steps must be con­tin­u­al­ly tak­en to en­sure that these ben­e­fits are not reaped at the ex­pense of hu­man health and the en­vi­ron­ment."

Tilluck­d­har­ry said it was im­por­tant that the pes­ti­cide us­age was reg­u­lat­ed."It is im­per­a­tive that we strive to en­sure that they are utilised and man­aged wise­ly so as to safe­guard our health, our nat­ur­al re­sources and our en­vi­ron­ment, while en­hanc­ing our eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment," he said.