Agri exporters may lose big chunk of lucrative Japanese market

Philippine exporters of agricultural products face the risk of losing big chunks of the multimillion-dollar Japanese market with the expected approval this month of a law that calls for a total country ban on shipments found to exceed the acceptable levels of pesticide residue.

Department of Agriculture (DA) sources said the Japanese ruling coalition is set to pass into law a proposal to amend Japan’s Food Sanitation Law.

Approval of the proposed amendment will give Japanese government inspectors the authority to ban imports of a specific commodity from a specific country totally if even just a single shipment of that product is found to contain excessive pesticide-chemical residues.

"It will not matter if there is only one exporter whose products are found to contain excessive pesticide and chemical residue; it will definitely affect all exporters because it will be a total country ban," the sources said.

Currently, the Japanese government just rejects shipments of specific commodities discovered to be adulterated with extreme pesticide levels. As proposed, all commodities will be covered by the law, regardless of whether specific commodities are pesticide-free or are within acceptable levels of residue.

Sources said the proposal to amend Japan’s Food Sanitation Law was prompted by a series of recalls of frozen spinach shipments from China which were detected to contain pesticide residues way above the tolerable level.

Earlier this year, Philippine embassy officials in Japan asked the DA and the Bureau of Plant Industry to warn local exporters of okra to comply with the Japanese government’s directive to ensure that chemical residues do not go beyond tolerable levels.

Japan has imposed tight quarantine measures against fresh okra exports from the Philippines starting January this year when a test conducted by the Japan Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare showed okra samples from a Tarlac shipment was found to contain 0.17 parts per million (ppm) of chloryprifos residues. The allowable level is 0.1 ppm. The shipment was detained at the Japanese ports.

The threat of losing the profitable okra export business prompted growers to submit their okra samples for residue analysis at BPI’s pesticide analytical laboratory in Quezon City before shipping them to Japan.

The country had been exporting fresh okra to Japan at an average of 88.6 tons weekly valued at $240,000. But since the pesticide issue erupted early this year, the volume dropped to 16.4 tons and it is just beginning to pick up.

The country is also exporting other fresh farm produce to Japan such as seafoods, fruits and vegetables.